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THE UNIVERSITY 
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Return this book on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. A 
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_ ‘THE LITTLE WORLD 


By STELLA BENSON 


I POSE = LIVING ALONE « TWENTY 
THE POOR MAN’ ° PIPERS AND A DANCER 


THE 
PIP TLE WORE 


BY 
STELLA BENSON 


joew Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1925 
All rights reserve d 


CopyRIGHT, 1925, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. 
Published September, 1925. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 


A £ 


Y3 


: 


ea 


The sketches and articles in this book 
are nearly all reprinted from newspapers 
and magazines. I have to thank the 
Editor of the Star for encouragement in 
reprinting the greater part of them, and I 
am indebted to the Editors of the Nation 
and Atheneum, Country Life, Woman's 
Leader, South China Morning Post and 
the New York Bookman for their courtesy 
in raising no objection to the republication 
of the rest. 


5906059 


Vevtile | 
TOP RIR te beta ANA 
PPC 


Digitized by the Internet Archive © 
in 2022 with funding from 
University of Illinois Uroana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/littieworld00bens 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
‘TRIPPERS Beer ME he fect) COR AD ae rameter ae ee ance I 
Seat UNHARITANTS |. s. sitcl Nata ee aun & ieee 6 


MS ATES FU cs) o's APSR pae muletetiee EO 
Tue States II sibs: |) eA Di gE OM peRnEE NG MD Ge eee etek C) 
SEATARHSUA ELS e015 0) 0. haat ae Sa gree ae oe 
REIN TES FEV oN ey es Vi gd arcu Retna repent Mee g 
RESOAT ES OVA et ek We. ath dil SMU a ray ep uel cae 
SEs et Lio (as ay iting Uke Ure On) ot i aR ana 
ETL USS iN Rae UE RTA ame. A CY DELI NY Yen 
Manita—Macao—HoncKoNG . . . . - ~~ 39 
EIST Ota dh Lo, Ded pi cad rN 
ELEC LE TOURNEY: 0.000) ab lh cura ai Dette te ot tain 8 
EB CEs 4 5 a a | EY Hie Mee, Wists Peg | WI 
MEMORIA cgi is) ol) Leathe oh RTE ihatg re Te el NO 
Rechte ge 5 AR Merle th St Gd 
ELL I CCRC AT Lat oan AMA OR ao 
OES a EO aT Ri fa 
OLp ARMIES AND OLD EMPERORS. . . . - -~ 73 


BREA WO SE RIVER) 31 497 as oan eke, oh iis itice: 76 


vii 


viii CONTENTS 


PAGE 


PSDIA LS VT) (rei ecco ve. oo ea ey hee eee i TL 
BPD ERNUL Reel os ek ast Oe en en er ORS 
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ENDIAC LV a ujke nes) bet: sk ce Peee CERES Dae cet 
MURR OTATESAOGAINGL 5 Zils ce ee een ie Deven neen ita 
SD HRPSTATES AGAIN (LL (3). See eo Shean ote 
SHES DTATES ‘AGAIN’ [LT iu) eet ae eee ee ae 
SHE LOTATES: ‘(AGAIN "TVA th. ee oe ae ree ee ee ee 
‘EHR STATES! AGAIN V7, G5) wth e tiie hall coins Sane 
(GROGRAB EDV 5/2002 ia EN Sh ise MRS AO ee rome tat ae 
ANGELSIN THE RED SEA 4 ii. calle eee) ean Seine ORT te 
PICNICHING ADEN | ths O08, Ne) Crue all a: nn 
WuNNANED (oo eee See ee a ee Eee 
YUNNAN II A ee eae Erm ET LCA Ae Ra ee igh g War BTS 
MEN NANOLLD ') 36 Evel Rew ule He aMI emer 60 fe nee name se ak 


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PiGS' ANDAPIRATES {10)/\ Su Sa eee cas en eee 
EEA MOT if ENS A It Sn ne le ln 


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THE LITTLE WORLD 


TRIPPERS 


N Tintagel Cove the sea is as luminously green 
as though it had a light beneath it. The rocks 
above water are like leopards, streaked and spotted, 
and beneath the water they are like pale tremulous 
green ghosts. There is another ghost sometimes in 
the water; sometimes it comes to the surface and 
becomes a seal. The seal looks nervously this way 
and that; it looks outward first at the safe sea and 
then inward at the beach all flowered with the 
jumpers of charabancers. When it sees the 
jumpers it dives hurriedly and only reappears now 
and then to confirm its worst fears. 

The broken indented outlines. of King Arthur’s 
Castle comb the mists which stream in from the sea. 
The Castle crowns a high solitary rock and there is 
only one way on to the rock. It is a steep way, only 
to be followed by nimble trippers in single file. 

This is a piece of pretence history and concerns 
the nimblest trippers of all. Being history it points 
no moral except the obvious moral that it is wiser 


to be born within earshot of Piccadilly than without. 
I 


2 THE LITTLE WORLD 


The nimble Piccadilly trippers were four in num- 
ber and they got up at four o’clock on the morning 
of Bank Holiday. One carried a large bowl of 
Cornish cream; one carried a sack of saffron cakes, 
one a crate of pasties and the fourth was armed to 
the teeth. They were desperate persons and their 
names were Mirabeau and Mirabel, Justin and 
Justine. They belonged to the most subtle and 
insidious type of tripper. Justine and Mirabel wore 
neither orange jumpers nor bandanas. ‘They were 
plain-clothes trippers and they were not only des- 
perate but exceedingly supercilious. 

There is a very small old lady who keeps the 
keys of the castle. She knows a great deal about 
trippers—she laughs at them but I do not think 
she finds it necessary to despise them. She is a 
Resident and Residents shall inherit the earth. She 
did not know enough to suspect the four super- 
trippers, Mirabeau and Mirabel, Justin and Justine. 
Armed with the key they filed along the steep 
sloping ridge that leads to the castle gate. Perhaps 
the ghost of the fair bridge along which Lancelot 
rode still hung upon the air above their heads but, 
as a support for the feet of trippers, that bridge 
has gone. One must climb down now, down almost 
within reach of the springing applegreen spray, 
almost within earshot of the drumming of the sea 
in the caves below the castle—and then up again 
towards a sky patterned with white cag Mtouds and 
with a changing design of ai bail 


a 


« 


Ff » 
eS, 7 


TRIPPERS 3 


When the time of day changed from faery time 
to human time—that is to say, at about nine o’clock 
—there was a roaring sound that at first was like a 
little seed of sound planted in the air but presently 
outgrew even the chanting of the sea. And along 
every road—from Newquay, from Clovelly, from 
Bude and Bodmin, from Plymouth and the two St. 
Columbs—from further afield still, I think—from 
Kilburn, Walthamstow and the two Tootings, from 
Birmingham and the raucous streets of Liverpool 
and Glasgow, from New York and Philadelphia 
and the bald yellow cities of Illinois—came the 
charabancs, carrying hosts of the most innocent and 
terrible enemy of all, massing for the last spoiling 
of the castle. 

‘‘Trippers,” said Mirabeau, as he balanced the 
last of a row of quartz- and crystal-shot boulders 
on the brink of the precipice, “devour the color of 
the sea and bring the sun of the suburbs into the 
green dark of caves. Even fine weather is dull 
because they prayed for it in church yesterday.” 

‘Trippers,” said Justin who, with muscular yet 
refined movements, was driving stakes across the 
door in the machicolated wall, “are the last proof 
of the first fall from grace. Nobody tripped before 
Adam and Eve fell—or, in other words, before the 
first conducted tour was made from the first garden 
suburb.” 

__ Mirabel was stacking provisions in a little cave 
_under a bank of thyme. She said, “I hate trippers 


4 THE LITTLE WORLD 


senselessly. I hate their women because their 
blouses are thicker and more vivid than their skirts, 
because their skirts dip behind and because they lie 
in gross lumps upon the thyme with their hats awry. 
I hate the men because their coats are not Harris 
tweed yet pretend to be and because their shoes 
are the wrong brown. [ hate little children with 
chocolate round their mouths and no handkerchiefs. 
I hate them all because they play gramophones in 
places where not even music should intrude. I 
know well that everyone has a right to the air that 
blows over the peacock sea—even if some people 
breathe that air through sticks of peppermint rock. 
I admit I am a tripper myself; I come from far to 
see things I have heard of. To eat lotus in a 
Chinese temple garden or bananas on Blackpool 
pier is the same thing—I know it. But I am I and 
only I have rights.” 


Justine said nothing but she covered with her — 
revolver the leaders of the long line of trippers — 
filing up the path that grooves the first boulders — 


at the foot of the castle rock. The leading tripper 
was a woman in a striped blouse and flounced skirt; 
she was inadequately corsetted yet very warm. 
Two little girls followed her; they wore thick red 
dresses with low waists and lace collars; their cheeks 


bulged with bullseyes. Behind them came a man 
with a fat cheerful nose and a curl on his forehead; — 


he wore his cap back to front. 
As Mirabeau and Justin set their shoulders to the 


+ 


TRIPPERS 5 


first balanced boulder, Justine pulled the trigger 
and Mirabel unfurled their banner in the misty 
hes ae 

The police from Launceston, sent for by a dis- 
tracted Parish council, found the four supercilious 
super-trippers after the siege was broken. They lay 
in the King’s Chapel on the summit of their strong- 
hold—the four silly crusaders. They lay in a row 
with their sneering eyes shut and their knees crossed 
—like other crusaders. 

Their souls were shaking hands with King Arthur 
and his knights in Paradise. 

‘Come in, adventurers,” cried Arthur, ‘“‘trippers 
all, come in.”” And when he had shaken hands with 
Mirabeau and Mirabel, Justin and Justine, he 
turned with outstretched hand to the other trippers 
asthmatically filing up the quartz-shot path to Para- 
dise. There was the hot woman, striped and sticky 
as a bullseye; there was the imitation motor cyclist 
with his cap the wrong way round, and there were 
the little girls with remnants of chocolate clinging 
to their very eyelashes. ‘Come in, come in, adven- 
tures all...” 


OLDEST INHABITANTS 


THINK of starting a simple but expensive 
memory course for inhabitants of the prov- 
inces of over eighty years of age. Oldest inhabitants 
seem to be always culled from our rural popula- 
tion. One very rarely meets a Londoner who re- 
members Piccadilly Circus before Mercury—(or is 
it Eros?)—alighted there, or Kensington before 
Barker’s arrival, or the Underground before it 
knew Pears Soap. Londoners have either short 
memories or short lives. My memory course, there- 
fore, will advertise for its public in the provinces 
only. ‘The advertisements will be headed ““TOO 
YOUNG AT SEVENTY?” Pupils will be ex-. 
pected to commit to memory simple incidents con- 
nected with the Napoleonic Wars—including the 
reports current weekly of Napoleon’s execution in 
the Tower—-; the first journey of Puffing Billy— 
tickets obtainable from Thomas Cook’s grandfather 
and Son’s great-grandfather—, and the laying of 
a wreath on the grave of George IV by the secretary 
of the Upward and Onward Society. 
A cheaper line for juniors will embrace the 
Crimean War, the first penny stamp and humorous 


anecdotes about aunts in crinolines and uncles on 
6 


OLDEST INHABITANTS ; 


boneshaker bicycles. Those who wish to specialize 
in having spoken with the son of the man who was 
the first to spread the news of Queen Anne’s death 
or having been dandled on the knee of the great- 
grand-daughter of the barmaid who served the last 
drink to Ben Jonson, may do so at a higher rate. 

Everyone is a potential Oldest Inhabitant—more 
or less consciously. Throughout the War and the 
Peace and the drought and the strikes—even in the 
dim days of Suffragette trouble or the first motor 
cars—you could see budding Oldest Inhabitants go- 
ing about with pursed lips thinking, ““By Jove, won’t 
it be fun to tell my great-grandchildren this . . . 
My, won’t they gape. .. .” As a matter of fact, 
great-grandchildren never gape; they walk away 
when reminiscences begin. Indeed at the present 
time nobody walks away more quickly than I do. 
But I cannot conceal from myself the fact that the 
day must come when I no longer walk away but, on 
the contrary, am walked away from. 

However it is fortunate that Oldest Inhabitants 
do not have to depend on their great-grandchildren 
for the necessary half-crowns. As long as a jour- 
nalist is left alive Oldest Inhabitants will never find 
themselves without a public. 

I myself mean to out-reminisce the most ardent 
reminiscer. Already, while yet most of my care- 
fully stored copy is shared with every man in the 
street, when nobody wants to hear my air-raid ad- 
ventures, when nobody will admire me for drinking 


8 THE LITTLE WORLD 


sugarless coffee in 1916, when, in a word, every- 
one knows far too much—I am beset by temptation. 
Everyone is; that is why so many of us go to America 
now and it is also why so many Americans are 
coming over here. They can still nail our attention 
by means of anecdotes of Prohibition and we can 
still raise a thrill in the States by lying about bombs. 
But these triumphs are too easy for me. I find 
that as the years pass my tendency is to have been 
actually and actively present at every great event in 
the world’s history during the last twenty-five years. 
Yesterday my friends might have heard me men- 
tion that I had seen the first aeroplane that flew 
at Aldershot, lived in the same world as Tennyson, 
Gladstone and Dan Leno, watched on the Barbary 
Coast the first scenes of the tragedy of Prohibition. 
Tomorrow—or, more accurately, in the year 2000 
—there is no saying what my friends may hear me 
mention. By then I shall have looped the loop with 
Cody and Count Zeppelin, I shall have heard Ten- 
nyson recite the Idylls of the King to the Fabian 
Society, I shall have shared with Gladstone at 
Delmonico’s, N. Y., the last recorded cocktail in 
the States. ‘That was the year of the drought,” 
I shall add triumphantly, “the year when all the 
best people could be seen going down Piccadilly in 
aertex-cellular lounge suits made by Mr. Mallaby 
Deely. . .” I shall really believe it. The mind’s 
eye is a docile organ. 


OLDEST INHABITANTS 9 


If all this should not come true of me, then no 
doubt it will be true of you. Nearly all of us are 
really counting on becoming Oldest Inhabitants. 
We all have our little pet lies laid by in lavender. 


THE STATES 
I 


Y friend and I had come—walking and bor- 
rowing ‘‘lifts” alternately—up to this moun- 
tain village in New England because there was a 


house there that had once been hers and because she | 


wanted to revisit a place she remembered and loved. 
But the place didn’t smile in the same way as she 
remembered—places never do—her own late house 
was empty of hospitable successors and the village 
had forgotten her. We broke into the empty house 
and stayed in it for a night or two, finding some 
marooned cans of pork and beans in the larder. On 
Sunday we went, on an impulse, to church, seeking 
distraction. [he impulse had seized my friend 
immediately after she had washed her hair, and 
church saw us arriving, she with towelled shoulders 
and a handsome disorder of dripping yellow hair 
down her back, I in smock, breeches and a little 
sat-upon hat. I remembered church in my English 
youth—Sunday hats .. . tight shoes squeaking up 


the aisle—and hoped that the Almighty would prove ~ 
to be more democratic in this His Own Country. | 
He did. The minister vaulted from his dais to © 


to 


i a Sate at wae Pe 


THE STATES II 


welcome us and, taking one of our hands in each of 
his, drew us to a front pew. 

“Now which of you plays the harmawnium?”’ he 
said tous archly. “Our organist has failed us.”’ 

“She does. She’s English,” said my friend, in 
consequence almost ceasing to be my friend for the 
moment. 

‘‘Now isn’t that just fine,”’ said the minister and 
drew me out of the pew towards the harmonium. 

Now I have never tried to play the harmonium, 
but on the piano, the guitar or the penny whistle I 
can play ‘Abide With Me” or “Sun of my Soul” 
rather effectively. Unfortunately, as this was a 
morning service, the shades of night could not be 
expected to bear out the spirit of these hymns, but 
the minister, on being informed of my musical limi- 
tations, said that this was not really very important. 

So after a moment of silent stage fright during 
which I could hear no sound but the regular drip- 
ping of my friend’s hair on the back of her pew, I 
began, intending to play a few preliminary staves 
of the hymn, solo, as they do in all the best abbeys 
and cathedrals. The congregation appreciated this 
intention, but the minister did not. He began Abid- 
ing With Me from the first note, leaving the con- 
gregation to burst into tongue two lines later. There 
was a terrible entanglement of sound which indeed 
_ was never unravelled before the end of the hymn, 
for I could not make up my mind which to follow. 
I returned to my pew without waiting for an encore. 


’ 


12 THE LITTLE WORLD 


But the minister forgave me. He inserted into 
his sermon a generous and hearty testimonial to 
England and the English. 

“A nawble race, the English,” he began and 
leaned over towards me for confirmation. ‘‘Isn’t 
that saw? ... Empire, I believe, does not neces- 
sarily spring from imperialism ... dawn’t you 
agree with me? .. . and now that we are all en- 
gaged in the greatest international conflict in history, 
dawn’t you think we ought... .” 

These appeals were addressed directly to me and, 
since I had never taken part in a sermon before in 
this way, I hardly knew whether I was right in re- 
plying, ‘Indeed I hope so .. . yes certainly ... 


no doubt you are right,” etc., etc. I now think that © 
the questions were simply rhetorical, though they did — 


not seem so, and that a gratified silence was all that 
was expected of me. 

After this scene of humiliation we decided to seek 
oblivion in departure. Hearing that a train left its 
terminus eighteen miles away at sunrise next morn- 
ing, we determined to walk all night and catch it. 


We took two blankets from the linen cupboard — 


of the house in which we had been making an un- 


authorized visit, a lantern, and a horrible cocktail — 


made of the dregs of a whiskey bottle mixed with 
those of a brandy bottle. (The cellar of our un- 


known hosts was lamentably low.) We thought — 


that this mixture might at least save our lives in an 


emergency. We wore the blankets as ponchos. 


eS YS 
Ss SO 


RAY 


s 


Rs 


WHITE MOUNTAIN MOONLIGHT 


THE Lisp wat 
SOR Rt ea | 
| WOMERSITY AF Hiiois 


=. x 
4 


‘ 


THE STATES 15 


“At least,’ said my friend, as we set off in the 
bright moonlight looking like two ambulant bolsters, 
“we're safe anywhere. Dressed like this we needn't 
fear that we shall fascinate the licentious peasantry.” 

Nothing happened to us. We walked all night 
down empty frosty moonlit roads. We strayed four 
miles out of our way and found ourselves among 
the great fantastic buildings of a deserted iron 
foundry. Huge pale towers and halls seemed to 
have been built by an extinct race of giants. One 
imagined that they were only reconstructed on the 
remembering air when the old moon shone full. For 
a time we could find no one, not even a ghost, to set 
us on our way again, but presently we found a soli- 
tary post office, and our clamor woke up a tolerant 


postmaster who came out, dressed in a childish night- 


dress, and showed us our path. 

The moonlight at last was strangely replaced by 
a clear frosty dawn, and as soon as commonplace 
daylight stripped the far valleys of mist and mys- 
teries, we saw our train standing, puffing urgently, 


a thousand miles away, as it seemed. So we ran. 


We ran downhill for the whole thousand miles. 
I thought I should never breathe again. The 
poncho and the frightful cocktail somehow induced 
me to break out into a violent cold sweat—a thing 
I had read about but never experienced. I froze 


and dripped simultaneously. I was sure that death 
must follow this effort, but still it seemed worth it 


if we could catch that train. A car passed us and 


16 THE LITTLE WORLD 


answered our wavings and entreaties for a lift with 
“Git out the road.” We reached the depot as 
the tail of the train disappeared round the bend. 
Twenty-one miles of violent endeavor wasted. 
Defeated and robbed of pride we threw ourselves 
on our backs in mid-platform. The depot men stood 
round us, eyeing our disguise, scarcely believing their 
eyes. The driver of the car that had passed us 
came and said, ‘‘Werl . . . wurn’t that too bad. I 
ses to meself, ‘Ef I knoo who them two females 
was I’d take a chance and givem a lift to the depot.’ 
. . . But you sure looked so queer and I ses to me- 
self, ‘One can never tell...” 

The innkeeper of that village was a jewel. He 
gave us quantities of brandy—at five o’clock in the 
morning—he boiled hot baths with his own hands. 
There was no train that day and we slept under six 
quilts each till the night. But when we sought to 
pay our bill the landlord said, “Aw werl ... I 
dawn’t take money from fawks that looks as ef they 
hadn’t got enough of it.” 

We nearly missed the next train in our efforts to 
induce him to compromise. 


It 


NEVER could make any impression on Ameri- 
can newspapers. ‘They never hailed me as a 
contributor, even as an interviewee I cut no ice. 
What I hoped were the subtler intricacies of my 


THE STATES 17 


character seemed to be always missed by inter- 
viewers. ‘She Hit London Cop”’ was once printed 
under my photograph to give point to an interview 
in which I had given rein to my opinion on the 
Feminist question. The truth is, we English are 
not dramatic enough; the English affectation or art 
of understatement makes absolutely no appeal in 
America. ‘The essence of American art and wit is’ 
overstatement. 

Studying the most serious news-organ of San 
Francisco, streaked with comics, spotted with movie 
darlings and murderers, patched with eye-stretching 
domestic secrets like—HUBBY NEVER COMES 
HOME TILL BREAKFAST SAYS FAIR 
PLEADER—, I used to remember the sacred sheet 
upon my London breakfast table of long ago, reti- 
cent, unsmiling, scrupulously unlocal, innocent of 
large type, hiding its light under a bushel of re- 
fined advertising, leaving nothing outside for the 
superficial eye but the triple mystery—birth, death 
and marriage. .. . 

American papers are meant to be read in one 
minute by people who have only two minutes of 
leisure during the day and spend them in an ele- 
vator on the way to the office. They have to atone 
for their garrulity by an extreme concentration of 
snappy news on their outer pages. For instance, the 
democratic American, wishing to know which of his 
social superiors is in town, can master at a glance 
this information in type three inches high at the 


18 THE LITTLE WORLD 


head of an outside column—GEE THIS IS 
GREAT SAYS WOOL-KING HOME FROM — 
WILDS. Whereas the democratic Englishman on 
a similar quest would probably go all the way from 
Mornington Crescent to Elephant and Castle before 
he found the following treasure buried in the insig- 
nificant masses of the Court Circular; Mr. and Mrs. 
Marmaduke Woolley have returned to their town 
residence after a visit to the country. Or again, the~ 
belligerent American hungering to stretch his lungs 
once more to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner 
—in which exercise he was so prematurely inter-— 
rupted in 1918—may be gratified by this six-inch 
statement; WAR WITH SO-AND-SO INEVITA- 
BLE, without troubling to lower his busy and patri- 
otic eye to the tiresome postscript in the smallest” 
possible lettering—is opinion of Mayor of Minx- 
ville. g 
The American newspaper often consists of as_ 
much as half a column devoted to international af-— 
fairs, an immense auto section, a financial section, 
a movie section, a society section showing Native — 
Sons and Daughters of the Golden West in sepia 
attending each other’s weddings, and a scandal sec- 
tion describing the deliciously immoral practices of — 
minor European princelings whom no one ever heard 
of before. These scandal supplements inspire and 
excuse such opinions as that with which one of my_ 
pupils in a California university once began his 
essay; All foreigners labor under crowned heads in 


e 


THE STATES 19 


dirt and immortality. There is also, in a well-con- 
ducted newspaper, a woman’s section, a supplement 
devoted to the private affairs of the Prince of 
Wales, a baseball section, a supplement for the in- 
struction of our kiddies, and a Love Supplement 
(the illustrated story of the Love of Goldlashes and 
her Soldier Boy Throughout the Ages). Above all 
there is the Comic Supplement. 

One of the most uniting elements in the United 
States is the Comic Supplement. Every city has its 
newspapers; no city reads the organ of any other 
city, but the comics are common to all respectable 
newspapers and one may help to Bring Up Father 
anywhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific. 
Father is the angel of America, Maggie Jiggs stands 
for devil. Father has a very much greater and more 
loyal band of followers than has the President of 
the United States. What Father says—goes. 

_ I have only once known the comics to miss their 
mark, and that—I am ashamed to say—was in a 
certain neighborhood peopled by a little English 
colony of ranchers and miners at the feet of the 
Rockies in Colorado. I lived there for some months 
doing odd chores for a kind old English couple. 
{ loaded alfalfa or delivered butter and eggs in the 
ittle mining city five miles off all day, and at night— 
‘ince the shack was only a two-room one—slept com- 
‘ortably and healthily on the porch with snow 
lrifting over me. But at meals and in the evenings 
ve had heart to heart talks in the little hot cramped 


20 THE LITTLE WORLD 


kitchen-livingroom; we discussed the Comic Supple- 
ments—from a moral standpoint. 

“She didn’t ought to ’ave clipped ’im one on the 
jaw ... A woman’s a woman, meant to love, 
honor, and obey, and there ain’t no excuse for a 
woman, be’aving like that . . . Oh yes—I know ’e 
provoked ’er, men can be a sore trial and that’s a 
fact—but still . . .” 

In the presence of any great natural phenomenon 
such as Niagara or Bringing Up Father, it becomes 
at once apparent how incurably man suffers from 
inadequacy—and perhaps the English more.than any 
other race, on account of their craving for cold 
moderation in words. I once made an expedition 
up a Rocky Mountain with these same ranching 
compatriots and some neighbors who were miners. 
There was a view—east, of the prairie,—west, of 
the white peaks; there were, at our feet, fantastic 
sloping rocks of a rare true rose-red. When we saw 
these things we all looked ashamed as if God had 
been mentioned. ‘Then we said, ‘““My word, I can 
see Harrison’s shack quite plain. And there now 

. if I can’t see the pigstye be’ind it. See that 
little speck? That must be the ’og that ’e looks to 
kill come Saturday... .” But we soon turned 
from that to a discussion of a Royal Prince’s mar- 
riage. 

And I must say that not one of the Americans 
about us on that mountain top seemed to be writing 
odes or praising God. 


THE STATES 21 


Americans travel as tourists, we travel as money- 
seekers. But—and here is the strange thing—we 
all come home at last as poets. The poet in man is 
only articulate when his thoughts run home. The 
American on the beautiful other side of the world 
forgets liberty and George Washington and remem- 
bers the good ground on which he once set his feet, 
the deep shadows across his canyons, the cactus on 
his warm foothills, the steep ladders of sunlight on 
Fifth Avenue. And the Englishman, bound by the 
chains of property in the shadow of alien moun- 
tains, forgets the dust kicked up by the charabancs, 
forgets the high income tax, seeks reminders only of 
the little poetic things of England—he who needs no 
reminders; he asks for news of the primroses in the 

old woods, he speaks stammeringly of sweet williams 
‘in misty village gardens, of skylarks on the downs, 
of the friendly golden fogs of London, short days 
and early candletimes and robins singing on Christ- 
mas Day. 


Ill 


ARRIVED in San Francisco alone on Christ- 
mas Eve with five dollars in my possession, 
knowing no one. I went to a rather expensive hotel 
in Oakland—no hotel, bad or good, was, prac- 
tically speaking, within my means so I might as well 

choose a good one. 
I remember that my first difficulty was the bed. 


22 THE LITTLE WORLD 


There was, as I saw at a glance, no bed in my bed- 
room. I concealed my surprise—I have a horror 
of seeming insular. ‘This was evidently a Cali- 
fornian peculiarity—bedless bedrooms—and I must 
make the best of it. I opened the wardrobe to hang 
up my hat—and the bed, which was one of those 
very patent labor-saving beds and had been trained 
to stand up on its hindlegs in the wardrobe when 
not in use, unfolded with a crash on my head. 

I did not feel financially justified in eating the 
hotel’s Christmas dinner. So I bought some biscuits 
and a bar of chocolate and went out to the Golden 
Gate beach. There was a cold swift mist leaping to 
shore over the tall barrier of the wintry breaking 
waves. The sun was thickly wrapped away in dark 
red-gray clouds and the sands looked pink and more 
ethereal than the sky. Three dogs were very kind 
to me, teaching me to throw sticks into the sea in 
the San Francisco way. They and I sat wagging 
our tails in a cold but cheerful row sharing biscuits 
(which they called crackers) and chocolate, and re- 
membering other Christmases. A seagull joined us 
and proved to be a biscuit-maniac. It ate till it could 
hardly bend its neck. But when I gave it a piece — 
of chocolate, its beak fell. A look of intense re- 
proach came into its round eye; it hurried to the sea _ 
and spat the piece of chocolate into a retreating | 
wave. It was too deeply offended to rejoin me and | 
the dogs. But we didn’t mind. All the more Christ- | 
mas dinner for us... . | 


be. 


THE STATES 23 


IV 


EING alive at all is an incessant shock and, I 
B think, all the best lives are melodramas. 
Nevertheless in the course of every life the shock 
must hang fire at times. And in the construction of 
the melodrama there must be flaws, long-deferred 
entrances, maybe, on the part of the hero or heroine, 
or tardy exits on the part of the comic relief, or too 
much dialogue on the part of everybody. Moments 
between shocks are very hard moments to bear. To 
work one’s way round the world is to be often 
gloriously surprised and often exquisitely uncertain 
and often futureless. But even so, there are mo- 
ments when one is only too sure... . 

These lapses, I remember, seemed especially fre- 
quent in the life of an editorial reader to a Cali- 
fornia publishing house which concentrated on scien- 
tific works. In California I tried to be a University 
coach, a lady’s maid, a collector of overdue bills 
for an irascible firm, a salesman of boys’ books— 
and, last of all, an editorial reader. The last was 
the best-paid, the most comfortable, the most digni- 
fied—and the most dreadfully sure . . . Or so it 
seems to me now. I remember editorially reading a 
zoological book named, with extraordinary candor, 
the Boring Isopod. This Isopod, the author stated, 
could bore even rock and, personally, I can well 
believe it. 

And, as it happened, my intimacy with the Isopod 


= 


24 THE LITTLE WORLD 


was interrupted by an earthquake. I had never ex- 
perienced an earthquake before. I had always sup- 
posed that a quake was a weakness on the part of 
the earth and that the feeling would be one of floppy 
giving way. On the contrary, the feeling was inde- 
scribably tense and energetic, as though the gods 
clenched their fists, as though titanic muscles were 
contracted suddenly. The office and the Boring 
Isopod and I were gripped, lifted, and let go. All 
the eucalyptus trees outside bowed and drew a hiss- 
ing breath. 

For several days the awakening shock of that 
earthquake stayed with me; the adventures of the © 
Isopod sang themselves to me like a saga. Being 
alive was strange again. And when this feeling died 
away, having waited expectantly without result for 
a repetition of the helpful phenomenon, I took the 
matter into my own hands. I approached an aviator 
and, having pressed ten dollars into his hand, said, in 
effect, “Sir, be an earthquake to me.” He replied, 
‘“T’ain’t enough, ma-am. You can’t get nothing 
worth-while for ten bucks . . .”’ Ten dollars, how-— 
ever, was all I had. I told him that I was a writer 
and would boost him to the best of my ability in re-— 
turn for a satisfactory shock. (And so I did. On ~ 
my recommendation, probably hundreds of readers — 
of the London Star made a note of the name of © 
Roland S. Thomson.) He complied. In his com-— 
pany, mounted upon a Curtis biplane, I ricocheted — 
from one pillar of the Golden Gate to the other, t 


THE STATES 25 


I turned upside down over San Francisco and 
saw the skyscrapers hanging like chandeliers over 
my head, I pounced upon cowering Alcatraz Island 
like a hawk upon a rabbit, and skipped facetiously 
over the whistling masts of ships. I was absolutely 
terrified. 

At any rate I suggest these homely remedies for 
what they are worth, to a world surely suffering— 
at least in parts—from a very confusing lack of war. 
Earthquakes, to be sure, should be taken with care 
and cannot always be resorted to in moderation. 
But there is always a Roland S. Thomson available 
to everyone who possesses ten dollars and a select 
public. The only drawback is that one can only 
once enjoy a thing for the first time. Even a shock 
can become sure .. . 

Still, a fertile mind will easily evolve equivalent 
forms of shock. If the worst comes to the worst, 
there is always the Electric Eel at the Zoo. I should 
like, by the way, to witness a meeting between the 
Electric Eel and the Boring Isopod. 


V 


OU’RE some stoodent,’’ said the doctor. 
‘“You’ve most always got a book in yer hands. 
What’s that—Saturday Evening Post? Dandy book 
that. I do a g’deal of reading myself.” 
“Aw Doc,” said the bandaged girl in the next 
bed. ‘‘J’ever read the Rosary?” 


26 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Soure Lireadsit., 

“Gee, what a book . . . Gee, I cried till I was 
sick to me stomach. Tck tck . . . Poor guy went 
blind. . . . Gee, she was a peach. . . disguised 
her voice an’ all . . .Tck tck . . . You know, Doc, 
I guess I’m crazy but it’s a fact I take a book like 
that as much to heart as if it was reel life. You know 
what I mean, a reely good book like that. Gee, 
didn’t seem like it was just made up. ’Member that 
Duchess . . . and the mansion? That’s what I 
call a reel true book any 

“You said it, lady,” said the doctor, but I was 
the ward’s prize stoodent and he turned again to 
me. “J’ever read a book called ‘Decameron’ by a 
Wop? It’s got more meat in it than most of the 
punk that a lotta white men write, let me tell you. 
Care to have me loan it you? Lotta women 
wouldn’t stand for it but you’re a stoodent. Some- 
body told me you write books as well, is that so? 
Well, say, it’s bin an interesting talk we had and— 
do you know what—you’ve inspired me to write a 
book meself . . . Bin in my mind for years but I’ve 
never gotten around to making a start. Yes, 
ma-am ... The subject’ll be Cirrhosis of the 
iver aie, | 


JAPAN 
I 


HO was it who first sailed across the Pacific? 
I have an idea that it must have been 
Thomas Cook & Son because—(if I remember 
aright )—-Thomas Cook discovered Australia and— 
probably—Son discovered New Zealand to match. 
Dear Thomas Cook . . . his office is the world, and 
somewhere in his ledgers, I know, lies hidden the 
secret of real adventure and of eternal youth. Look 
at Son, for instance. Ever since history began he 
has been as elusive as Love and has never yet made 
the mistake of achieving a name of his own or grow- 
ing up. I may be wrong but I imagine that Thomas 
Cook was among the first to evolve from slimy and 
primeval chaos and—directly he was dry—began 
distributing granite tickets for trips up newly arisen 
mountains. And when Son was born, he brought 
into the business that priceless asset which has been 
the essence of Thomas Cook’s prosperity—the 
spirit of search for impossible things. When I think 
of Thomas Cook I am proud to be an Englishwoman 
and when I think of Son I am proud to be a 
Daughter. 
27 


28 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Great as should be our admiration for people who 
go anywhere now for the first time, we should re-— 


member that at least they have newspapers to take 


off their hats to them and say thank you. ‘The — 


original Tourist Fathers of blessed memory had, as — 


a rule, nothing but a gratified conscience and a royal 
snub to look forward to. 
After starting across the Pacific myself I found 


less difficulty than before in realizing the intrepidity ; 
of those first travelers. I traveled on the smallest — 


and dingiest Japanese passenger ship on the Pacific © 
—yet I realize that its discomforts can be nothing © 


to those surmounted by the first climbers up and ~ 
down that mountainous swell. I imagine easily how © 
those early great waves must have hungered for the © 
bones of their first challengers. Even for my bones ~ 


they hungered to such an extent that they broke one. 


By the time I had reached Honolulu I had actually ~ 


a broken shoulder in addition to scores of minor 
wounds acquired by contact with walls, floors, fun- 
nels, masts, stewards, and any fellow passengers 
harder in texture than myself. One wave actually 


threw someone else’s fried egg and a carving knife 


at me along the whole length of a table. 


The question of the food of the pioneering tour- — 
ists is one which I can hardly bear to contemplate. — 


A minor liner’s food is like the conversation of some 


people I know; it starts with an almost hysterical © 
brilliance, all treasures are produced extravagantly © 


during the first outburst. And after that—corned 


* 


f 


JAPAN 29 


beef . . . canned tomatoes . . . very weary eggs 
_, .. The eggs on board my ship were so tired that 
_it was no surprise to me to find them one day posing 
on the menu as “Boiled Eggs a la Religieuse.” 
Nobody dared to eat them under this ominous name 
_but I understood, I sympathized, as I try to sympa- 
_ thize with all weary yearning souls. Indeed I thought 
the idea particularly beautiful. 

Since therefore the Pacific—even today—is an 
ocean conspicuous for its lack of grocers, depart- 
ment stores, dairy-farms or other modern conven- 
ences, my brain reels when I think of the tourists 
who traveled in a pre-canned-tomato age. 

I should like to know what were the fears— 
probably courageously secret fears—felt by the first 
adventurers who did not even know the world was 
round and that—at any rate—Piccadilly Circus was 
always remotely ahead. Anything was possible in a 
world so inconceivable and so cruel. Myself, look- 
ing at that cynical, sliding sea, I think I know what 
form my terrors would have taken. For at first 
the sea battled with us ¢s though defying our chal- 
lenge, and later it ran ahead of us, mocking us . . . 
“Have your way then, fools, sail on, sail on . . .” 
and last of all it was suddenly terribly smooth and 
terribly pale under a blind black sky. A great wind 
for a few hours beat the sea absolutely flat; here and 
there a few hairs of spray went up like steam. 
Behind the squealing of the wind we could hear the 
flaying rain and the sea hissing like an aroused 


30 THE LITTLE WORLD 


dragon. And still the sea was level as the water 
of a great waterfall, just above the edge. And I 
know that—if I had been the first traveler—I should 
have been sure then that this was the great Edge 
of the World, and that over that edge the doomed 


taut sea and my little silly doomed ship were falling, » 


shrieking, hissing, down into a chaos of nethermost 
stars. 

It was almost incredible to find that imagined 
terror past when the influence of the wind upon the 
sea made itself felt at last. The ship, no longer 


spellbound, swung and kicked healthily in a radiance © 


of flying spray and stars and phosphorus. 

Yet still, it seems, adventurers set sail to unknown 
ports. There was a man on our ship who turned 
aside on a new journey and will never come home to 
Japan now. He was Japanese and he died in the 
steerage on New Year’s Day while most of the crew 
and nearly all the passengers were dancing drunk. 
The sailors danced on the lower deck, singing high, 


metallic, unending, unbeginning songs and beating 


their hands in time to their dancing. ‘To this rather 
heartless sound the last sad adventurer began his 
new journey. 

Next evening, as the moon dispersed the clouds 
accumulated by a stormy sunset, the body of the 


traveler, with leaden weights at his feet, was given © 


a lonely farewell feast on the deck. A little table 
was spread with rice and fruits, and all the Japanese 
fellow voyagers of this man who had no friends 


a 


JAPAN 31 


filed passed his couch of honor one by one and sa- 
luted him. At a little distance a Portuguese priest, 
uninvited but well-intentioned, read the Christian 
burial service on the chance that a few stray blessings 
might thus be lured out of the generous moonlit 
spaces for the benefit of so forlorn a pilgrim. The 
moon, besides preparing for the traveler a white 
_road up the sea, threw stars of silver broadcast on 
all the waves. These, I thought, must be the spirits 
of other men who had died at sea, assembling to 
shew this newcomer the way. And indeed, as he 
slipped over the edge—over his ultimate edge—all 
the spirits gathered gladly round him and, as we 
left the place behind, we could still see a great starry 
crowd about it. I was glad that a goodby so ex- 
quisite should have followed an end so noisy and 
so friendless. Only, when I saw Fuji standing on 
a cloud as we came into Yokohama, I was sorry that 
anyone who had loved that—as every Japanese 
loves Fuji—should die out of sight of it. 

But Fuji, after all, is another story. 

Japan is a fair story even the first word of which 
cannot be told by me. For I arrived in Yokohama 
with only about ten dollars plus a ticket to Hong- 
kong. It was sleety midwinter in the height of the 
Spanish influenza epidemic and I had a broken 
shoulder. 

To come, a2 woman alone, from California to 
Japan has the effect of a heavy fall. In California 
women, though not—as I think—essentially inde- 


— ~~ 


32 THE LITTLE WORLD 


pendent, are socially precious. In Japan they are 
trash. In California a woman becomes almost tired 
of being supported in and out of public vehicles 
as though she were fainting, of having kerbstones’ 
and puddles pointed out to her as though she were 
blind, and of having packages a few ounces in weight 
snatched away from her as though she had stolen 
them. In Japan, on the contrary, you may try—in 
spite of one arm in a sling—to carry two suitcases 
and a typewriter at once, be swept into gutters by 
jinrickshas and at the same time be bitten by a horse 
with a straw petticoat and a red and yellow orna- 
ment on its spine but no manners— (Japanese horses 
dote on the flavor of women)—but no true Japanese 
will notice you or help you at all. Except that a 
policeman will probably choose that moment to ask 
you in Japanese for your passport or, failing that, 
for the date of your grandfather’s first marriage 
and for your reason for being in existence. If, in 
reply, you recite the two or three Japanese remarks 
you have learned—a request for hot water or for 
another boiled egg—the policeman is not mollified 
but says, “No spik Inglis,” and repeats his demands © 
in a much fiercer voice. On the whole in Japan you 
realize that you have committed such a social error | 
in being born that you instinctively acquire the habit 
of apologizing for being present or absent as the 
case may be, or for being trodden on or bitten or 
anything. ; ' | 
Once I committed half of a real crime, the other 

¥ 


4 
iw 


{ 


JAPAN 33 


‘half being committed by another member of my con- 
-demned sex. She and I were passing the outer gate 
of the Mikado’s palace in Tokyo when two motor | 
cyclists in uniform, riding furiously abreast, charged 
past us shouting something that we took to be merely 
the usual police maledictions. But they were fol- 
lowed by more loudly cursing outriders and we then 
realized that we were sharing the responsibility for 
‘some unusually offensive crime. Turning to our 
ricksha-men to appeal for advice, we found that they 
had retreated to the side of the road and were there 
prostrating themselves reverently. The flaw in 
‘their patriotism, however, was the fact that they 
had left us in the middle of the road, rolled up in 
rugs in tilted rickshas, I, helpless with horror, and 
my friend, with blasphemous giggling. 

I do not know who was the Japanese royalty who 
now began to pass us in several carriages and four, 
I only know that his progress was marred by the 
necessity of an unprincely detour, a slight but hideous 
‘bending in the august straight line of his route, to 
‘allow for the mushroom-like sprouting of two fe- 
males in derelict rickshas in his path. I am sure 
that only concern for dignity and the royal horses 
saved us from being driven over. 

I went to a Geisha show in Yokohama with an 
Englishman. I went feeling like an empress because 
the show was called into being for my benefit; I 
came away feeling less than the dust. At the door 
of the house we were received—or rather my com- 


34 THE LITTLE WORLD 


panion was received—by a flock of little twittering 
women who clustered round him, removed his shoes, 
and conveyed him affectionately into the house. He 
was treated by them exactly as a California woman 
is treated by men. They indicated to him the joints 


a en 


in the mats in case he should fall over them and the © 


ceiling in case he should knock his head against it. 
Now and then a new twitterer, after a profound 


reverence, joined his escort. As for me, I was left 


to remove my own shoes in the company of the 


ricksha coolies, and pant behind the procession, pad- — 


ding unloved on frozen feet. Finally we reached a 
room furnished exquisitely with emptiness. The 


walls, which were sliding screens, were of gold paper — 
in black wooden frames; The handles by which the — 


screens were moved were black silk tassels. There 


was nothing in the room but a bowl in a corner, — 
containing a gnarled dwarf cedar and another bowl 
in the middle containing glowing charcoal. The — 
human inmates were decorative enough for any — 
room. They were two little dancers aged, as they 
indicated to us on their fingers, thirteen and fifteen 
years; their faces were very brilliantly and crudely — 
painted; their hair was caught in wide black loops — 
by vivid pins; their kimonos seemed to lack no pos- 
sible color; their obis—or wide sashes—were tied 
behind in puffed exaggerated bows, and each one 
carried a fan stuck in her obi over her heart. These 


two little flowers—like Moore’s sunflower—turned 


their faces to one sun only. ‘They settled my com- © 


) 
| 

a 
al 
a. | 


4G 
ef 

§ 

dow 


a 
} 


i : 


JAPAN 35 


-panion on a cushion embroidered with a pheasant, 
_and brought in a low table beautified with delicate 
bowls of food to be placed before him. As an after- 
thought and at my companion’s request, they posed 
-me on a lesser cushion embroidered with a mere 
frog. They danced for him. Their dancing was a 
sort of sleepwalking; their minds did not seem to 
take the slightest interest in what their feet and 
hands and delicate little bodies were doing; their 
cold small eyes looked out of their painted faces 
without inspiration or enthusiasm. Later they took 
a certain interest in me as though in a curious animal. 
They pulled my hair gently to see how it worked; 
they cooed with surprise while experimenting on it 
with Japanese pins—an experiment to which bobbed 
hair does not conveniently lend itself. They felt the 
materials of my clothes with industrious impersonal 
hands, untied my sling, opened my handbag and, 
finding a tobacco pouch and cigarette papers in its 
unladylike depths, demanded patronizingly to be 
shown how to roll. 

I cannot help feeling glad that when my soul 
was, in the beginning, classified as female and given 
to an underling angel to be disposed of on earth, it 
Was not fitted with a Japanese body. I cannot think 
that there would be very much left of that soul 
by now. 

A Japanese husband, I am told, when introducing 
his wife to a man friend, says, in effect, ‘‘Sir, this is 
ny little nuisance.” The friend replies, “On the 


36 THE LITTLE WORLD 


contrary, Sir, she is more beautiful than a flower.” 
The lady listens to this cancelling out of opinions; 
she bows humbly but her eyes, I know, are cold and 
neutral. Her body bends; her hands serve always; 
her lips are ready with apology—and what more 
could any man desire? 

While my money lasted and on the proceeds of 
a couple of newspaper articles and an “Interview 
with Stella Benson,” I managed to go to Kyoto and 
back. My only happy moments in Japan were spent 
in the tangled shadow of trees and temples in Kyoto 
and during a day on Lake Biwa. We returned from 
Lake Biwa by an underground river, I remember, in 
the light of bland paper lanterns and to the sound 
of echoing chanteys from unseen singers hauling 
their way up against the splashing tinkling dimmed 
current. Z 

I came back to Yokohama with my ticket to 
Hongkong as my only asset. I went to a Russian 
refugee hotel to await a ship and there was over- 
come by Spanish influenza. The rare persons who 
occasionally attended to me did so wearing masks 
like demon dogs. After a week I managed to reel 
on board a China-bound Japanese ship and there fin- 
ished my attack in the orthodox way with the lung 
complications that were worn by the best people with 
influenza that year. If I had not clung with a 
desperate firmness to the brass rail of my bunk, I 
should have been repatriated at Kobe. But luckily 
there was a coal strike which delayed us, so the 


JAPAN 37 


quarantine officers allowed me to wait and see. Also 
‘someone had given me a little japonica tree in full 
‘flower and a tiny Japanese garden of old twisted 
trees and gaudy fairy bridges in a box—and these 
things always drew the attention of Japanese quar- 
antine men away from me. A flower is a part of all 
the best business in hand in Japan—a much more 
important part than is a woman. 


II 


HIS is the story of a curious little conversation 
| in the (late) Grand Hotel, Yokohama, with 
a kind, tipsy man whom I had met at a dance. 
During my last two days in Yokohama, when I could 
just stand after my attack of influenza, he came 
and fetched me each afternoon in a ricksha from my 
miserable Russian hotel to sit in the Grand Hotel 
and sniff the perfume of cocktails and health and 
wealth. My arm was still in a sling, my face no 
doubt a hollow and ashy green and, as the sun went 
down, caution prompted me to get home to bed 
before the chill of night began. 

, “Sit still,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know it’s seven 
o'clock but I’m not going to let you go home. I 
want tosave you. Do you really think I don’t know 
what’s the matter with you? Do you really imagine 
you can go about with your arm ina sling and your 
face that color and your determination to get away 
dy yourself at a fixed time every afternoon—and 


38 THE LITTLE WORLD 


continue to hide from your friends what you’re suf- 
fering from? . . . My dear, morphia’s an enemy 
that speaks for itself. Now, now, nothing you can 
say can deceive me—you see I know that protests 
are symptoms in themselves . . . My dear girl, you 
needn’t be afraid of me, I’ve known drugtakers 


——— 


before. I loved one . . . I spent all my fortune in 


trying to save her and at last, on a doctor’s advice, 
I sent her home. . . . Well . . . she drowned her- 


self from the ship . . . For her sake, you must let ~ 


9 


me help you. . 

The story.of his love was, I happen to know, com- 
pletely untrue. It was part of the damask of ro- 
mantic fiction with which he covered his rather pur- 


poseless and sad life. I never saw him entirely sober — 
or entirely unromantic. But all his fictions were 
kind and dealt with kindness. He died in the Club — 
bar in the Yokohama earthquake and I am sure that © 


death interrupted him in one of the gentle rambling 
lies he so often told about the ideal life that he had 


never achieved. I hope he had a wrapt sentimental - 
listener like me for that last lie. He was almost — 


always just sober enough to feel the need of that. 


MANILA—MACAO—HONGKONG | 

| HERE are three ways of occupying an alien 
| place—first, to absorb, second, to be absorbed, 
third, neither to absorb nor to be absorbed. 
_ Manila is a vessel filled with oil and water. The 
Filipinos remain extremely Filipino. As for the 
Americans—one hundred per cent is a figure that 
admits of no modification. 

Manila has a sort of illusion of siege attached to 
it. The camp of America is pitched outside the con- 
fident sunny walls of the old city. The traveler first 
sets foot in a raw impermanent-looking area and 
could for a while believe himself in some West- 
ern township. You may see a bald red trail 
labelled Twenty-Something Street. You almost ex- 
pect to see the sign so expressive of the glowing 
Western spirit—DRIVE SLOWLY, CON- 
GESTED BUSINESS DISTRICT—erected hope- 
fully in a wilderness of scrub and sand. ‘The 
traveler toils across acres of imported America 
towards the hotel which rears itself, indecently opu- 
lent, above a waste of junk and lumber yards and 
gray hot grass—and suddenly, like the first pioneers 
in California, he meets the challenge of the old 
world again across the desert—here is Spain again, 

39 


40 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Manila, girdled with her golden wall and crownec 
with a romantic sun. 

Americans and Filipinos, as it seems to me, liv 
together in fifty per cent liberty, forty-nine per cen 
equality, and one per cent fraternity. Politically, ; 
great deal is said about brotherhood—personally 
almost nothing. ) 

I arrived in Manila during the Carnival. Bu 
the buildings erected for the occasion had beer 
burnt down the night before my arrival. Merry 
makers were pathetically trying to make merry 
the smoke among the ashes. I do not know wha) 
a raw or uncooked carnival in Manila may be liki 
but this one which had been “‘tried in the fire” wa: 
literally refined by the process. I was astonishec 
at the self-conscious politeness of the occasion; at 
atmosphere of I-can’t-talk-to-you-we-haven’ t-been-in 
troduced prevailed. People went laboriously maske 
and dominoed in select and well-chaperoned parties: 
it seemed that men poured confetti with feverisl 
caution over their aunts and sisters. Groups o 
virtuous business men and their overstitched wive 
stood watching through shocked pincenez a handfu 
of young new Sammies who were making so bold a 
to dance with some pretty Filipino girls. The girl 
wore their national dress—wired gauze at the shoul 
ders, high Elizabethan ruff behind the head, loope 
complicated skirt. . . . The Americans wore thet 
national dress... . : 

As for Hongkong, that grave and misty tilte 


MANILA—MACAO—HONGKONG 41 


ity, it makes no claim at all to a spirit of equality. 
t is a solid lump of England; from waterside to 
eak-tip the little funicular carries Anglo-Saxon 
ivilization up and down. The average Hongkonger 
as a tendency to address all Chinese in a throaty 
one of authority as ‘Boy.’ He is quite sure that 
o show respect to “these natives” “lowers British 
restige.’ So Chinese Hongkong has acquired a 
oul that only answers to the name of Boy. Only 
he congested attached city of junks and sampans, 
noored and swinging with the tides at the island’s 
dge, is true to its own vivid and unsanitary convic- 
ions. ‘The little red and gold prayers flutter at 
very vessel’s mast and stern to protect the water 
ity from the march of civilization. 

The city of Macao is old, but it seems older than 
ts years. Here, I think, you have China victorious. 
Portugal lies drugged and asleep in the arms of 
-hina. The empty shell of Portuguese taste is there, 
he colored plaster walls, the low corrugated red tile 
oofs, the quiet gardened convents, the churches full 
fa vulgar and ardent daylight . . . Yet the city 
eemed to me almost wholly Chinese at heart. The 
road calm masks of Chinese women look down on 
he streets through carved bars and trellises that 
eem made to frame much more radiant faces; the 
unt eccentric shapes of papayas and bananas fill 
he squares and gardens instead of roses and olives; 
he churches are deserted except for a few little 
ranquil Chinese matrons, trousered and sleek, with 


_»on\to theiz;shoulders. And fire, born of a Chinese 


42 THE LITTLE WORLD 


their babies strapped, in big colored handkerchiefs, 


sun, has devoured the cathedral except for its facade) 
which stands stark and stricken, with sunny space! 
as much behind it as before. The Chinese temples 
stand, their ferocious porcelain skylines bristling 
with dragons and dolphins, their dusty and slovenly 
altars presided over by absent-minded but com. 
placent Buddhas. And the Chinese fan-tan dens) 
stand—are encouraged by the Portuguese Govern: 
ment—and there you can go and take rather monoto- 
nous risks with a spare dollar and watch the China. 
man as he best loves to be—with his head bent over 
a board on which all that he has lies in danger . . 
Only when the shadows of the big African soldiers 
cross the door does it seem as if Portugal opened 
an indolent eye, ey | 


HONGKONG 
| HENEVER I go to Hongkong now, tall 


fashionable young Chinese and Eurasians 
lean across chemists’ counters, hurry from inside 
garages and bound into my cabin in the guise of 
hotel touts—to remind me that once I taught them 
certain branches of scholastic knowledge. Both they 
and I forget now—and perhaps never knew—ex- 
actly what knowledge they succeeded in acquiring 
from me. In the days when I was working my way 
round the world I thought myself lucky to be en- 
gaged to teach a class of fifty boys in all branches 
of human knowledge—(except mathematics) —for 
a hundred and forty Hongkong dollars a month. 

I lacked not only degrees, diplomas and all neces- 
sary knowledge, but also the voice and address of 
the teacher. I had a very noisy and robust-spirited 
class but to its credit let me say that no boy ever 
actually defied me. If any boy had been unkind to 
me on a hot day I should have cried; I don’t mind 
confessing that now. ‘The boys, in spite of a pen- 
chant for pea-shooters and cribs, were in the main 
extremely kind to me and [| think that was because 
my teaching did not tax their brains, and my disci- 
pline was so erratic that it demanded an almost 

43 


44 THE LITTLE WORLD 


paternal tolerance on their part. The ages of my: 
boys ranged from ten or so—in the Eurasian half of 
the class—to twenty-three, in the Chinese benches—_ 
but all alike were strangely soothed by my ‘‘method.” 
I treated them exactly like a kindergarten. A lesson 
in hygiene, for instance, would be accompanied— 
and, I firmly maintain, enlivened—by sketches on the 
blackboard representing such subjects as a microbe— 
in a facetious top-hat—carrying a little portmanteau 
labelled Typhoid, tripping up over a Smell called Per- 
manganate of Potash. History and Scripture also: 
lent themselves to illustration. J am sure that these. 
‘‘twopence-colored”’ lessons hooked on to inattentive 
Chinese minds more firmly than did the “penny- 
plain” of some of the more experienced teachers. ~ 

Scripture was my worst difficulty, since to my gen- 
eration, I think, the Bible is rather a sentiment than 
a conviction. Most of the stories are hard to teach 
—from the school point of view—as true, and still 
harder to show from my own point of view as the 
wild and lovely things they are to me. It is difficult) 
to look on our old-remembered and insidious Bible 
as a new and sudden study, in any case. And it is 
dificult to cope conscientiously with the response of 
fifty skeptics to Western “‘superstitions.” Legend 
is a thing that the carriers of Western civilization 
have carefully drilled the Chinese to view with 
suspicion in their own history and lore. Such a 
message, once preached, can never be unsaid. Such 
a serpent, loosed in the garden of lovely and un- 


HONGKONG 45 


likely and half-forgotten things, turns upon the 
hand that freed it. 

“But that only superstition, marm, didn’t it?” 
‘Such a fire can dry up the watery triumphs of Noah 
and, in the clear light of that fire, all glories and 
stories—the angelic checking of Abraham’s fanatic 
knife above the neck of little Isaac; the excellent 
close bargaining with God for the preservation of 
Sodom and Gomorrah; David’s schoolboy victory 
over Goliath; the business successes of the dreamer, 
Joseph, and the poetry that intruded into the efforts 
of prosy Moses—all these look cold and lifeless. 


‘Superstition ...no... yes... but anyway 
beautiful and amusing ... Well, [Il shew you 
how David looked, perhaps, saying goodby to his 
few sheep in the wilderness . . .”’ 


_ The blackboard, a bridge between fact and fancy, 
‘was our refuge. 
_ When I first mentioned to my class that I wanted 
ito be in my turn instructed in the ways of Chinese 
‘restaurants and Chinese theatres, there was a sound 
of reproach in fifty voices. 

“Oh, no, marm, you didn’t could like such thing. 
Chinese theatre too much superstitions. Bi 

I had to assert my authority, such as it was, and 
finally Ng Poon Wong, a hitherto carefree creature, 
the noisiest and most intelligent in the class, under- 
took the dreadful duty of bearleader. There were 
two bears to be led, myself and an inquiring sailor. 
About one-tenth of one per cent of the personnel of 


46 THE LITTLE WORLD 


the British Navy is occasionally willing to lower the 
British Prestige to this extent, if I may say so with- 
out shattering England’s faith in her toatl 
bulwark. 

Ng Poon Wong ordered us a dinner. Scarled 
with embarrassment at our conspicuous gaucherie, he 
watched us knock pigeon’s eggs on to the floor with 
chopsticks, he watched us dip each mouthful into 
all the wrong little condiment-saucers, he bowed 
sadly to us as we drank his health in a blend of . 
methylated spirit and cheap scent. And, being: 
Chinese, he kept his word under difficulties—he tool 
us to the theatre. 

We were the only occidentals there. Next to me. 
sat a contemptuous Chinese duke (or something) | 
with a little skull cap and a fine brocade robe which : 
he drew away from accidental contact with my vul-— 
gar taffeta. The third and fourth fingers of his 
left hand wore fingernails longer than the fingers 
themselves, yet, although much hampered by this. 
aristocratic disability, the martyr took snuff without 
ceasing out of a little jade bottle with a coral’ 
stopper. Up and down all the aisles of the theatre | 
walked men with little towels in cauldrons of hot 
water. On being signalled to by members of the | 
audience, these men threw the steaming screwed-up 
towels over scores of heads with perfect aim. The 
recipient of a towel wiped his face, his shaven head, 
his naked breast and his arms with it and then, with 
strength renewed, flung it back to the cauldron to 


bd 


HONGKONG 47 


ye re-soaked and used again. I watched fascinated, 
trembling for my own hat, but I never saw an acci- 
lent in this towel air-service. Above us the gallery 
was fringed with the soles of the bare feet of the 
nore plebeian audience; scantily dressed vendors of 
sunflower seeds pushed about among our knees; the 
arm between each two chairs was flattened to form a 
‘ittle table on which constantly replenished cups of 
‘eafy tea were balanced by kind but dangerous men 
who swung spitting boiling kettles about with loud 
shouts that drowned the drama. Indeed the drama 
seemed to be the last thing considered in a Chinese 
theatre. 

/ Of the large stage, about one-twentieth was re- 
served for the performers. Right centre, the 
troupe’s washing was being hung out by a large and 
voluble company of amahs to drip upon the actors’ 
neads. Left centre, half a dozen supers undressed 
suddenly and went to bed. Two little boys raced 
on scooters up and down the back of the stage. All 
the members of the cast who were not at the moment 
acting stood about on the stage dressing desultorily, 
discussing the weather prospects or the price of rice 
with the orchestra or with members of the audience 
at the back of the hall. 

The orchestra itself seemed bewilderingly tele- 
scopic; at one moment it would consist of at least 
four gongists, six tea-trayists, two bagpipers without 
the bags and a dozen flautists, all playing indus- 
‘riously without reference to one another or to any 


48 THE LITTLE WORLD 


score. At another moment half the performers— 
or sometimes all but one—perhaps in the middle of 
a top note by the hero, would suddenly go away to 
have a drink. The hero, looking only slightly silly, 
after a surreptitious reproachful glance at the empty 
orchestra benches, would finish his song bravely! 
alone. There was a jazz man, however, who played) 
about ten instruments at once with different toes, 
fingers, elbows and knees. He remained faithful) 
throughout, apparently because he was playing in 
his sleep. 

In front of the orchestra were three chairs, 
Sometimes these, according to Ng Poon Wong, rep- 
resented mountains, sometimes a double bed, some-: 
times a sacred grove of bamboos, sometimes the Em- 
peror’s palace, and then again, sometimes they were: 
unexpectedly admitted to be three chairs and people 
actually sat on them. Between these versatile chairs 
and what might have been the footlights—only 
there were no footlights—a space of about ten feet: 
by six was sacred to about six actors and about 
twelve property men. 

The property men seemed to find the actors very 
much in their way. Ng Poon Wong told us that 
they were invisible—‘‘You don’t can see all those 
helping man’”—and we were glad to know this, for, 
had we believed the evidence of our own eyes, we 
should have thought the useful fellows rather inade- 
quately dressed for classical drama. In spite of 
their negligent look, however, they kept the drama 


HONGKONG 49 


ogether. They bristled with little tickets describ- 
ng the varying roles of the three chairs; whenever 
in actor wanted to die or to kneel before a superior, 
he nearest property man produced a little mat; 
vhenever anyone started on a journey—sometimes 
ls many as seven times round the chairs or, on one 
yecasion, up one end of the row of chairs and down 
he other—a property man stuck a large pointed hat 
ypon the traveler’s passive head. The property men 
sept the actors supplied with horses or, in other 
vords, little bamboos decorated with red tassels, 
vhich were stage shorthand for horses. Directly a 
nandarin was given one of these, his legs began to 
‘risk about of their own volition, so to speak, leaving 
iis dignified upper manners unimpaired—and the 
nost incurable occidental could then see that he was 
nounted. 
_ As for the story, it was an edifying one about a 
man who was almost too faithful to his grand- 
nother. His life’s work, as he saw it, was seeking 
yamboo shoots for the old lady’s table. The emperor 
ent files of emissaries round and round the chairs 
70 summon the hero to a high position at court, but 
the filial creature would not go. At one time a 
demon tried to tempt him—but here the action be- 
tame too frank for comment; suffice it to say that 
the demon was a lady and that Ng Poon Wong 
chose this moment to begin explanations. “She want 
marriage ...” he said, but I fancy this was an 
overstatement. Even this danger the hero escaped. 


iv / 


50 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Finally’ the grandmother herself, not in the least. 
grateful for this fidelity, tired of bamboo shoots: 
and probably thinking only of the separation allow- 
ance, insisted on her descendant’s acceptance of a 
well-paid job at a great distance, and so the poor 
fellow span three times round in agony, seized a 
horse from a property man who was scratching his 
head with it, and rode away with an aggrieved frou. 
frou of silk petticoats. 

All the actors were men, but, whether they were 
enacting men or women, they all chanted their parts’ 
in strained falsetto voices. They were at first stiffly. 
encrusted in gorgeously embroidered robes, but, as 
the evening wore on and became hotter, these robes 
became unpractical. By the end of the play most of 
the performers were naked down to their middles, 
except for decent cascades of false beard and false 
hair. Property men came with hot towels and 
scrubbed each artist down back and front at inter- 
vals, without, of course, interrupting the action. 
Every actor carried his discarded robes on his arm, 
to remind us that he still possessed them. 

The performance closed with a fighting ballet. A 
very nimbly jumping person wearing the mask of 
an ape, and another, rather less athletic, dressed as a 
tiger, each with followers to match, fought intricate) 
and ingenious battles, jumping under and over one} 
another, clashing weapons in rhythm and chiming 
challenge with challenge, following accurate figures 
that suggested sanguinary country dances. After an 


HONGKONG 51 


jour or two of this we left the performance still 
losing and no doubt it continued to close for the 
est of the night. The gongists and the tenor and 
Ito tea-trays were just settling down to their work, 
he flautists had been out-crashed. It seemed there 
ever was a night so silent as the night that greeted 
Is outside with a kind winking of stars entangled 
vith the climbing lights of men; never was a sound 
10 blessedly little as the sound of the bare running 
‘eet of the ricksha men and the lapping of the moon- 
it water amid the broad sleeping cities of sampans 
ind junks moored along the wharfside. 


THE LITTLE JOURNEY 


T was morning when the ship slid out from under 
the eaves of Hongkong. Hongkong is like the 
great shadow of a Chinese temple upon the sky; 
its summit is nearly always ruled straight by a high 
horizontal cloud, its slopes have the optimistic con-. 
cavity of temples and only lack a titanic dragon and 
a curled lion or two to make the temple suggestion 
complete. At night, so absurdly is Hongkong tilted, 
it loses its outline; the lights of the Peak climb $0 
high and the stars so low. 

But it was morning when my little ship deftly ex. 
tricated herself from the tangle of shadows and. 
ships in the harbor. Between the tawny junks, the 
low gray battleships with decks like petrified forests, | 
the dark rusty tramp steamers, the hooded sampans_ 
on which the Chinese water-coolies with their women’ 
and their babies and cats and flowers live—between | 
this and that my little ship picked her way. | 

My fifty Chinese boys in three motor launchd 
had come, partly to wish me well and partly for the 
pleasure of disobeying orders. In a cloud of white 
pyjama-ed boys, I had alighted on the surpra 


little the and now—Goodby ... goodby . 
goodby . . . I could hardly see them, sO forioall 
52 a 


THE LITTLE JOURNEY 53 


did they urge their purring boats—each boat the tip 

of a feathered arrow of spray—in figure eights 

about the slow course of my Chang-Shing. I saw 

them at last like little frantic water-beetles beneath 
the upraised heel of tall Hongkong. 

And at last Hongkong itself was dim and the 
verystallized beads and loops of silver cloud blew 
‘across the great harbor and obscured the faces of 
‘the gaunt hills of the New Territory. 
| When Hongkong slipped over the gray-glass rim 
‘of the sea, the Chang-Shing seemed all alone like a 
‘guest at a strange deserted feast. A great company 
of remote islands stood about her and, without wel- 
‘come, watched her pass. I have never been so much 
jalone on a ship before; the ways of globetrotters 
‘have been too much my ways; men and women have 
‘been between me and the sea. I have criminally 
Jassociated ships with little sentimental affairs, with 
the autobiographies of traveling salesmen, with 
‘thwarted Grand Slams in No Trumps, with beef tea 
vand cheap scent. The Chang-Shing carried only 
indigo and—by courtesy—me. She was only smart 
In comparison with some of the junks. And, per- 
haps in order to shew herself to advantage, for the 
first two days of her voyage north she rolled snort- 
ing proudly up the rough ruts of a plunging avenue 
of junks. Chinese fishing junks are like skeletons 
in crinolines. Their tattered matting sails are 
stiffened with bamboos like fans; wreathed about 
‘their figures are red paper prayers, fluttering to 
| 


54 THE LITTLE WORLD 


catch the attention of the heedless gods. Often) 
these junks are tilted forward, stern high and bows) 
awash, as though the vessel contemplated diving. | 
They swung at anchor, jealously guarding their little | 
claims in the sea, each claim staked out by a hedge’ 
of flagged bamboos floating upright. | 
China, with hills dull red or dunes bleakly whith 
ran by us to the west. There was never a sign of life. 
on the coast and, at night, never a light. We passed’ 
a lighthouse on the third day; white and sophisti- 
Se it sprang up in a lonely dreambound world. | 
A man waved from it. Could he be a man and’ 
not a god? How terribly the sea must count to’ 
himttiey. 
“You an’ him can have the sea for me,”’ said the 
skipper, who was from Dundee and, like most sail at 
ors, believed that he wanted to settle down. 
said rather prettily that all he would want to see “t 
the sea for the rest of his life would be a “wee far 
seelver edge . . .”” He talked little of the immedi 
ate sea; his stories, which held me spellbound over a 
lingering mango or lichee in the tiny saloon, dealt 
with adventures only occasionally amphibious— 
tigers in the South China hills, quarrels and hot 
nights in Indian ports, mine-laying in the North Sea 
in wartime, the pursuit of gold in Australia by oné 
Weather-r-r beaten Br-r-rown, the occasional illicit 
relief of Port Arthur during the Russian War, the 
first voyage of an apprentice round the world in é 
sailing ship thirty years ago. Sometimes the tall 


THE LITTLE JOURNEY 55 


urned on typhoons and pirates but these things are 
o common they rarely produce a new yarn. Every 
sland talks of one typhoon until the next stops the 
alk; every river-mouth echoes with the monotonous 
loings of pirates. One of the most powerful trade 
inions in China, that land of perfect trade unions, is 
he pirates’ guild, they say. Most of all the skipper 
ind the mate and, on occasions, the pilot and the 
irm’s agent, loved to tell very small vague stories 
bout other sailors, stories which everyone but the 
‘and-lubber knew. Their minds were a network of 
yames. “Then there was McKay—d’you mind what 
tis bride said when he found her mither in the lair- 
der? And Guthrie who called for carrots—in 
yhanghai . . . and what was the tale of Fair-r- 
jguson an’ the centipede?’’ One never appreciates 
he greatness of Scotland until one goes to sea. 

_ The Chang-Shing dared not touch at so sophisti- 
ated a port as Shanghai, but one evening at sunset, 
m_a sea of glazed crimson, she passed the mouth of 
he Yang-tse river. The perspective of the clouds 
ollowed that of the river and there was a great 
eather of wine-colored cloud rooted, as it seemed, 
nthe sun itself; the tip of the plume hung low over 
yur mast. The river withdrew into a low confusion of 
ulls and into that confusion the sun sank down alive. 
_ We ran into a fog that night and the Chang- 
shing rent her soul and mine with cries of warning 
0an apparently empty world. But the fog was like 
he curtain between two acts, for when at noon next 


56 THE LITTLE WORLD 


day it was drawn up before our sight we were i 
northern seas and the great square-sailed junks tha 
traveled across our sight were of a new and mor 
austere shape. ‘The coast was clearer, fiercer an 
more scarred. Wei-hai-wei broke the outline of th 
cliffs and we could see the bulls of the British herd a 
rest—the dark formidable outlines of the Chin 
Squadron—and a mother-ship of submarines wit 
her frolicsome young. And at Wei-hai-wei, thoug 
we did not put into harbor, a large number of passer 
gers alighted. They were courtesy passengers lik 
me, a great company of the most incorrigible lanc 
lubbers, most unsuitably dressed for a sea-voyagi 
Finches, jays, pigeons, little tentative flautists nami 
less to me, smooth gray-crested dandies with scarli 
throats, a couple of sparrowhawks—lion and lam 
alike they had been sitting for the last twenty-for 
hours in agitated rows upon our rigging. The 
trusted me to a certain extent, though not to tk 
point of eating crumbs which I spread out for ther 
They combed the deck for worms all round my chai 
The seagulls laughed raucous nautical laughter + 
this innocent invasion. But the passengers kne’ 
what they were about. As one bird they diser 
barked at Wei-hai-wei. ] 

We reached the port of Chefoo late on our a 
night. All next day, while coolies, dyed bright bl: 
with indigo, piled into lighters the oozing sacks f 
our cargo, the skipper and I explored the st- 
stricken sordid city of Chefoo. It seemed to me- 


| 


THE LITTLE JOURNEY 57 


after Hongkong—a city baked and caked in squalor. 
The men beat the ponies, the boys beat the dogs, the 
yabies tortured the lizards. ‘The streets seemed full 
of dark men with faces contorted with anger and 
oodies full of the power of making anger felt. The 
shurches—of which there were plenty—looked on 
decorously, feeling, no doubt, that here was copy 
for endless sermons. 

_ The Yellow Sea is really very yellow, as yellow 
isa desert. Junks looked as though they had lost 
cheir way and run aground. 

_ A pilot, full of wheezy jokes, came on board and 
nserted the Chang-Shing into the Pei-ho river. 
Two Chinese mud forts, long proved futile by naval 
zuns in the Boxer rising, still keep up the pretence 
of guarding that narrow mouth. The Chang-Shing 
gnored them and began feeling her way up a water- 
way which is like a puzzle founded on a tireless 
repetition of the last letter of the alphabet. ‘The 
sarth was no less golden than the sea; the world, 
‘upped in a glittering pale horizon, was like an orgy 
of golden wine. Villages were built of yellow earth; 
-ven shadows were yellow; there was no color but 
vellow in the eyeless streets of the softly-moulded 
illages. There were graves everywhere, cones of 
rellow mud varying in height and perfection of 
ymmetry according to the importance of the occu- 
vant. It is a promotion to be dead in China and 
) he choice between one crumbling mud house and 
| nother i is a very small choice. The cities of the 


58 THE LITTLE WORLD 


living and the cities of the dead are not divided. 
Movement in the land was chiefly provided by the 
salt-mills; like merry-go-rounds at a home fair they’ 
span and span, lacking only music and gaudiness’ 
and laughter. Sometimes mudcaked babies ran) 
across a mud beach to throw themselves down in the. 
golden wave caused by the Chang-Shing’s passing. | 
In that wave the moored fishing boats stirred un- 
easily; they were like dragonflies asleep; their nets 
were stretched on quivering bamboos at the tops of: 
hinged masts. | 

Once, as the fringes of the smoke that overhangs’ 
Tientsin began to shut out the sun, there was music 
beside us and I looked down into a fishing boat on 
its way home from sea. In the bows sat the mu- 
sician, singing softly and vagrantly to a long-necked 
guitar; in the stern his partner had unbraided his 
waist-long blue-black hair and combed it slowly with) 
luxurious fingers. A tawny little boy in a single blue 
garment propelled the unhurried boat in time to the 
song. And then the city and the end of the journey) 
invaded us. 


PEKING 


I 


IYNTIL I went to Peking and met the Chinese 


f 


| dragon, I never cared for curly-haired heroes. 
_ always thought them artificial. But the dragon, 
rou can see, hasn’t a spark of artifice about him; 
here is sincerity in every curl of him. Probably he 
ries hard to grease the kink out of his hair, to the 
ecret regret of his mother. But there is nothing 
uperficial about that kink—the ineradicable tend- 
cy comes out even in his marcelled spine. 

_ Lalways liked lizards and now I have transferred 
ay more mature affections to dragons. I cannot de- 
ermine exactly what the popular feeling in China 
owards dragons is. I cannot guess offhand what 
ort of reception would be accorded to a dragon 
vho suddenly walked in by the Hatamen Gate and, 
fter calling at the Legations as a gentleman should, 
vent to cool off in the moat that surrounds the 
‘orbidden City—that moat in which the little yellow 
lazed dragons that fortify the skyline are reflected 
mong the pink and white floating lotuses. I do not 
uppose that the Peking camels would shy so whole- 
eartedly at such a visitor as they do at a simple 
‘ord car. 


59 


6o THE LITTLE WORLD | 


Sometimes you do meet a dragon in the street, 
walking vicariously on the legs of dozens of little 
boys. It has a band in front of it consisting off 
few trays and a bass wheeze, so you can see that if 
has admirers and that they do their best to give ii 
pleasure. Yet this dragon always looks to me thirsty 
and dissatisfied. Its tongue hangs out. I always 
used to attribute this to the music, but now I am 
informed that the purpose of this procession is tc 
lure dilatory rain out of the sky. 

But I repeat that if you are a dragon you canno) 
count on public opinion in China, even if you wall 
occasionally not without honor and have pom-pom) 
stuck into your hide by means of toothpicks. Only 
the other century, the Chinese authorities found ¢ 
stray dragon about ten miles out of Peking. They 
probably charged it with being without visible mean 
of subsistence, but really they suspected it of worl 
swallowing—a vice peculiar to dragons. A dragor 
that has got the taste for worlds—like a sheepdo 
that has started eating sheep—can never be cured 
This particular dragon was practically caught red 
handed. So the authorities came up behind it whil 
it was asleep and built a big pagoda on its head am 
a little pagoda on its tail and so pinned it dowr 
They did not try the well-precedented pinch 0 
salt on the tail—the Chinese are a painstakin 
race. 

I go and look at that dragon sometimes. Th 
coarse grass grows up his steep breast now, his pre 


PEKING 61 


| 

le is lost in granite boulders; twisted and crouching 
ines with silver trunks cling to his ribs. But still 
uthority does not trust him, still the two heavy 
agodas hold him down, and their bells, swinging in 
he wind, invoke the aid of heaven in a good work. 
\nd I admit that he is obviously not to be trusted. 
_ know that he lies awake all day and all night, a 
irisoner forever, thinking of the worlds he hunted 
nd of the worlds he caught. 

_ [have a picture, embroidered in silk, that shows 

ae the dragon when he was young. He is curly and 
the and metallic and he hunts a gold world across 
lack space. Gold is always the color of worlds on 
he wing; we all know that after we have hunted and 
aught one or two. But the dragon never learned 
auch; he never knew why a thing that is gold when 
unted should be ashes when caught. My silken 
icture shows him hollow-eyed and starved, dizzy 
vith the spinning and splendor of untasted worlds. 
o he was caught and there he lies. ‘The gentle 
veeds grow over his eyes and it is as well perhaps 
hat he cannot see what I can see today—the great 
palescent bubble of temptation blown anew every 
pring. He cannot see the banners of springtime in 
he great valley or the golden shining of the far 
oofs of the Forbidden City. 
_ There he lies, bewildered, with cold ashes on his 
ongue. And he wonders where the goodness of 
‘ood hunting goes, and whether hunting disappoint- 
rent is better than not hunting at all. 


62 THE LITTLE WORLD 


II 
USINESS as Usual,” the inspiring Anglo. 


Saxon war-cry, obtains. I sit in my hospital 
office in Peking—in my capacity of X-Ray assistant 
—-side by side with a skeleton, and try to keep as 
cool as the skeleton looks, in a temperature of 106, 
and listen, with the characteristically subtle ex. 
pression of the ignorant, to incoming rumors 
of war. 

Everything connected with the great half-built 
American hospital for which I work is now deco: 
rated with the Stars and Stripes for moral protec. 
tion. The primitive carts carrying out earth from 
our excavations to the outskirts of the city fly Olc 
Glory from their mules’ collars to prevent eithe 
army from commandeering them. The earth-stainec 
thin-queued men on their shafts look upon them) 
selves now as American citizens; they wave to w’ 
like brothers as we heave by in flagged rickshas. 5¢ 
ubiquitous is Martha Washington’s design in flag 
just now up our hutung that I began to feel that | 
was remaining safe by means of false pretences ani 
bought a very small Union Jack, which I tied to th 
fingernail of the dragon over our gate, to sugges 
to any loot-seeking band that might pass that th 
British Lion also had a paw in the matter. 

I have one dread and that is to see the Forbidde 
City at the mercy of shellfire. The propert 


—— 


PEKING 63 


brought by Chinese neighbors to us for protection 
is mostly tawdry and poor, but I think I shall gather 
ithe yellow and blue palaces and the rose-red walls 
and the dragony watch-houses and the great tented 
igates and the lotuses together and carry them home 
reverently to keep in a scented and sunlit place till 
the danger is over. 

_ I write this in a temple outside a western gate 
‘where my English host and hostess live in great 
friendliness with priests and in the sound of the 
‘hoarse low temple bells. And as I write we are 
undergoing a call from the Chinese colonel of the 
‘barracks opposite. Behind his fan he talks urgently 
‘and here and there wisps of the conversation are 
‘translated for me. He has no heart for war—there 
‘is, indeed, no heart and no sentiment in this war 
‘at all—at least for subordinates. There is no patri- 
‘otism involved, and it is difficult to risk one’s life 
‘with enthusiasm in a political quarrel the solution 
‘of which can bring no peace. The colonel’s outlook 
‘is detached. The rebel, he says, is the better man 
in this war. There is no question of loyalty, for 
neither combatant is on poor China’s side. Indeed 
‘to the impartial eye both factions seem to be in the 
‘position of rebels. One rebel, however, is counte- 
manced—though unwillingly—by Government au- 
thority, and the other is not. The uncountenanced 
is the finer spirit, one gathers. Uncountenanced 
‘rebels generally are, of course. 


64 THE LITTLE WORLD 


iil 


HE war round Peking, which has been theo- | 

retically raging for some weeks, has become 

more prominent. In fact I have stumbled over the 

thing and barked my shins, or, in other words, 

caught a cold by fleeing in the middle of the night 
from an army. 

After communications with the outer world had 
beén cut last week and newspapers had petered out, 
we men-in-the-street of Peking rather lost touch 
with the war. We heard hourly that someone was 
running away from someone else, often that every- 
one was running away from everyone else in all 
directions. Sometimes Tuan Chi Jui was pursuing 
Wu Pei Fu in the direction of Tibet with every 
hope of getting there, as it seemed, and sometimes 
Wu Pei Fu was spilling Tuan Chi Jui over the coast 
into the Yellow Sea. We became quite callous about 
the war. It seemed, to say the least of it, childist 
for two armies large enough to know better to rur | 
about so quickly in such hot weather. : 

So, in the afternoon of a very hot day, after thi , 
word has been given—as afterwards appeared—ti 
shut the city gates, I traveled, all unaware, in i 
ricksha to a friend’s temple about five miles toward _ 
the Western Hills. Nor did I know anything more— 
as romantic novelists say—except how red was chil 
sunset on the red thirsty fields and how kindly th 
stars looked down among the temple goldfis 


PEKING 65 


through the leaves of the scarlet-flowered creeper 
that drapes a great tree in the courtyard. No, I 
knew nothing more until two o’clock in the small 
hours when we all awoke to find ourselves in the act 
of being rescued by a gallant compatriot in a Ford 
car. Tuan’s army, it appeared, nimble as usual, was 
now running in a disorderly mood in our direction. 
_ Our rescuer had spent three hours fawning upon 
the city gates, trying to find a sesame that would 
open them and allow him to come out and warn us. 
Finally the officer in charge, wearied by seeing the 
blunt obstinate nose of the Ford pressed against 
the gate in his charge, let out the rescuer on con- 
dition that he return within the hour or else forever 
hold his peace. 

' Our dressing was much sooner done than said, 
and a band of fugitives, eight strong, squeezed into 
the Ford four-seater. I sat on the folded canvas 
hood at the back and I saw a hedgehog cross the 
road but not a single army running in any direction 
whatever. 

Each of Peking’s gates is done in duplicate, so 
to speak; there is an inner and an outer gate. The 
outer gate that night looked austere and beautiful 
in the dark socket of its archway in the great wall. 
The gate was a dim Chinese red and it was studded 
with bolts and big nails. There was no guard out- 
side, no greeting but the gate itself, and that was 
like a final and absolute NO. Our red-plumed 
Legation servant who had been clinging to the mud- 


~. 


66 . THE LITTLE WORLD 


guard throughout, wailed through the crack of the 
gate. Far away, from inside the inner gate, the 
guard replied in two snorts and a hiccough which, 
being interpreted, meant, it appeared, that the gate 
was closed for the duration of war. The importu- 
nate Ford turned its bright embarrassing eyes on 
the gate and tooted in the starlight while Chinese 
repartee flickered up and down through the crack. 
And at last we could see all at once that the crack 
was wider and then a soldier’s face over a blank 
shining paper lantern appeared in the opening. 
So we got back into Peking. 


I had only two regrets at the time—first, that we. 


had left my friends’ dog—a most charming 


-Eurasian—and their parrot at the mercy of the. 


looters, and second, that we ran over a Chinese 
dog on the way in. 

The army fulfilled expectations and reached our 
village that morning. I wonder what the parrot 
said. 

Those were my only two regrets at the time, but. 


next day I had many more, for the wounded ar- 
rived in our hospital. All day there were limp still 


figures on stretchers outside our X-Ray room, wait- 
ing for examination. 
I sat in the dark room under a spark of red light | 


taking notes as to the position of the bullets as the 


examining doctor announced them. Some of the 
soldiers groaned like wild beasts, some never opened 


their eyes, some chattered hysterically to the at- 


, 


' 


PEKING 67 


tendants about their experiences, some cried when 
‘they saw the inexplicable apparatus or when the 
great screen slid down as though to crush them, some 
indicated their wounds with their beautiful thin 
fawn-colored hands—as though their wounds were 
‘not visible enough. They seemed so detached and 
‘so entirely without niches in the world, so aloof 
from one another, so much like hurt animals, that 
it seemed almost strange that they should have 
names to file and should remember their own ages. 
They were like ghosts passing through the flushed 
twilight of the X-Ray room, they seemed to have 
no past and no future. They were the ruins of a 
lost army, their leader had forgotten them. Rumor 
had it that their general, escaping on an engine 
from the scene of his failure, had driven right 
through his army, over the living bodies of those 
who had failed with him. Many of them had lost 
their youth and their future in his service—but 
failure has no friends. 

Collectively, experience seems to teach them 
nothing, and though these have fallen and been for- 
saken, others fight on, for no ideal, for no cause, for 
10 reward, for no reason. 


IV 


WAS riding home towards Peking under the 
_& eaves of the outer wall of the Temple of Heaven. 
?eking is a maze of walls. The Chinese mind loves 


68 THE LITTLE WORLD 


walls. A truly chaste Chinese village, however 
small, counts itself undressed without a high wall | 
buttoned up to the neck. | 

In the space before the opposite wall of the 
Temple of Agriculture, a great crowd had built it- 
self into an amphitheatre about a clear level place. 

“What thing b’long there?” I asked the mafu. 

“B’long number one piecee look-see,” instantly 
replied the mafu, who is an optimist. Anything | 
that several thousands of his fellow countrymen | 
were coming to see must be a number one look-see, | 
So we stood waiting for the show until the mafu, — 
having made enquiries, announced with increasing — 
satisfaction, ‘“Bimeby wantchee makee dead five | 
piecee man.” 

Every face I could see at once seemed to me hid- 
eous, every smile fiendish. I set Woodrow, my pony, 
to try and struggle against the crowd towards the 
Chienmen gate which reared its guard-house safe 
and sun-tiled at the end of a long seething perspec 
tive. But the current was massively contrary to my| 
course; there was a slow glacier of humanity com- | 
ing and coming to see the show. An eager turbu- 
lence was abroad, the crowd, in comparison with the 
ordinary Chinese crowd, was rough; a series of 
jovial spirits thought fit to tease and strike Wood- 
row as he waded through, making him plunge and 
protest. Our flight was therefore very slow, and it 
seemed a long time before I could even pretend 
that I was out of sight of that ominous cleared 


PEKING 69 


space, bare except for a squad of Chinese soldiers 
waiting for their work and a line of American sol- 
diers waiting for their amusement. 

- Presently along the broad road from Chienmen a 
growing growl of angry voices came to us. And 
then soldiers appeared, clearing a path through 
the crowd. The faces of the soldiers were con- 
vulsed with anger and effort; with the flat of their 


h 


‘bayonets they were hitting the heads and shoulders 


‘of the packed mass of men and women in front of 


them. Woodrow and I were carried away by an 
‘eddy in the crowd almost into a booth at the side of 
the street. 

__ A passage was cleared and five mule-drawn carts 
came along the passage. ‘They were the same type 
of carts as those that carry rubbish away from the 
city’s activities to oblivion. The drivers, crouched 
on the shafts, had no light or interest in their eyes. 
On each cart there were four sullen-looking soldiers, 
and one condemned man with his arms and knees 
bound. 

' The first was either drunk or in an ecstasy of 
bravado; his head hung back, swinging from side to 
side, his eyes were tightly shut and he was singing 
in a piercing cracking voice that sometimes became 
a scream. ‘The other four victims were fixed in 
various attitudes of terror and hopelessness. The 
third had his head bowed between his tense knees 
and, as he passed, the anger of the crowd found 
suddenly increased voice. A hoarse and sickening 


70 THE LITTLE WORLD 


unison of reviling filled the air and seemed to re- 
bound from side to side of the street. Whatever 
those poor thin half-paralyzed boys had done, the 
crowd, in so lifting up its voice, hideously overstated 
its grievance. Even the action that followed the 
roar—an attempt on the part of men in the crowd 
to break through the guard and reach the prisoners | 
—seemed more healthy than that horribly unani- 
mous cursing. | 

The five carts went by, and a sixth cart, carrying 
most suggestive properties for the show. 

And then came a line of Ford cars, spruce and 
eager and exasperating as insects, filled with Am- 
erican and English men and women who had at last | 
found something in Peking interesting enough to 
draw them away from the little tables in the hotel | 
lounges. And the nearer I came to the city gate, | 
the more swiftly did the crowd pass, hustling in| 
rickshas, heaving in blue-hooded Peking carts, run- | 
ning on foot—running—running—running—drag- 
ging its faltering babies, urging its crippled pin- 
footed mothers and sisters, beating its donkeys, 
straining, cursing, all for fear lest it should be late’ 
for the show. | 


a — nS 


Vv 


INNER at the Grand Hotel ended in a 
resolve to drive in rickshas to the Temple: 
of Agriculture by moonlight. In four of us the! 


PEKING 71 


feast had induced a mood that made such a resolve, 
‘at one o'clock in the morning, seem perfectly nat- 
‘ural. But not prosaic. No passage through Peking 
in dancing rickshas down the soft dusty roads, in 
the filigree shadow of the carvings above the shop- 
fronts, in the soft light of paper lanterns, in the 
‘sound of cymbals and flutes from the theatres— 
.could ever be prosaic. 

In the moon-patched temple garden the illusion 
of tremulous ecstatic possibilities still held. By 
moonlight surely the old emperors would walk again 
‘to the sound of the drums down the white shallow 
steps of the temple to turn again the first furrow 
of the Imperial year with a plough drawn by 
dragons... . 

_ “Good Lord,” said Robin, “‘S’quite spooky. . . ”’ 
_ And after a moment he said, ‘“‘You’d almost think 
there was a light in that temple... .” After an- 
other moment, ‘‘By George, there is a light in that 
temple.” 

feats the moon .. . surely.” 

_ But the moon, tonight, had a voice, a thin waving 
silver voice. Was it the voice of the dead herald 
of an awakening dead emperor? There was a yel- 
low growing light in the temple. Were there 
banners moving in the light? 

“Oul say . . . I’m damned if something beastly 
isn’t going to appear. Let’s get a move on.” 

The voice followed our rather tense retreat across 
the splintered puzzling shadows of the garden. 


72 THE LITTLE WORLD 


“You’d almost think it was your name, Robin, that 
the voice was calling. . . ”’ 


“Robin. ... Robin. ... Robin. . ..”’ It seemed 


a little starved, crazy, wandering jew of a voice, 


trailing between stars. There was no sense to it. 
Let the damned old emperor put his hand to his 
plough again if he must and leave our Robin alone. 
Robin’s white fixed face was turned over his shoul- 
der towards where the imperial glow pulsed and 
expanded behind the screens and the pillars. Cham- 
pagne, he thought, had never played him such a 
trick before. 


“Robin... Robin... Robin...’ No human 


tongue could so spin out the syllables. 
Yes, *uLeiswca lin pamerws eae 
enchanted feet led us towards the temple steps. 


His incredulous, — 


The glow in the temple grew and grew—and _ 


burst into reality. Emperors ... dragons... 


banners . . . shades of forgotten ceremonies of 


springtime. . . 


‘Hullo, there you are,” said the friend with the. 


lantern, “I was just looking for you. . ._ I thought © 


Dd. 


I heard you say something about coming here. . . 


OLD ARMIES AND OLD EMPERORS 


| HE last war in North China being over and 
| the next war not having begun, the gates of 
_Peking once more opened tentatively to the world. 
I took advantage of this interlude to go forth with 
two or three donkey-loads of friends and other 
essentials to see the Great Wall. 

- Even against the evidence of my own eyes [ can- 
not believe that the Great Wall of China is built 
of solid ordinary stones laid one upon the other. 
Rather it seems moulded out of the stuff of which 
‘the mountains themselves were made long ago, when 
‘the world was plastic and empty of all save possi- 
‘bilities. There never was so sinuous a thing as 
that wall built by men, I think—so sinuous and so 
aspiring. It disdains valleys, always it seeks the 
‘highest and steepest edges, throwing itself into wild 
‘extravagant loops to avoid low or commonplace 
levels. No angle appals it. As we walked along 
the broad way that runs along the top of the wall 
from watch-tower to watch-tower, the steps often 
became so steep that we had to hold on with our 
hands to the tangle of morning glory and larkspur 
and campanula that now takes the place of the dis- 
consolate armies that used to man the wall. 

73 


74 THE LITTLE WORLD 


I always somehow take for granted that those | 
weather-beaten far-flung old armies were disconso-, 
late. I think it is pretty safe to assume that the 
Y.M.B.A.— (Young Men’s Buddhist Association) | 
—was not then what its equivalent is now. I tried 
to look down with a long-forgotten soldier’s mind’s | 
eye at the far yellow-patched plain of Manchuria — 
from one of the steepest angles of the wall, and it 
seemed as if my heart missed its foothold, so to. 
speak, and reeled on the brink of a spinning fall— 
down into the little walled town that guards the 
pass hundreds of feet below. It was a shock of’ 
relief to look over the edge of the wall and see no 
precipice—only the friendly grass and the wild 
flowers and the sheep cropping the roots of the wall. 
close beneath. 

We walked a little way down the paved camel 
road from the wall. The road is more ancient than 
the wall itself and, though still the supercilious. 
camels occasionally pad into Manchuria along its 
broad crooked stones, it is moribund as a ea 
now. The railway has killed it. | 

We patronized that same railway in spite of its | 
crime. We boarded a pig-train and sat on its step — 
with our feet dangling over China. Pigs are far 
more valuable than immortal souls in China, hence 
we traveled to Nankow much more quickly than | 
does the daily express. 

From Nankow we rode three hours on dancii 
donkeys, through sunset, dusk, and dark to the ; 


OLD ARMIES AND OLD EMPERORS 75 


greatest Ming Emperor’s tomb. By starlight we 
‘reached his tall and austere gateway and in a corner 
_of his outer hall we supped by candlelight. He was 
a silent yet splendid host. On every side he shared 
with usthe immense and sombre feast of which he had 
dreamed. By starlight we could not see the heads of 
‘the great pillars of the hall or the chequered and 
peacock-colored ceiling; we could barely see the dra- 
goned outline of the side-pavilions in the courtyard. 
_ But inthe sunrise light as I unrolled myself from my 
blanket, I could see through the carven marble balus- 
trade the dragons and sea-waves of roofs awakening 
and disentangling their lines from those of the old 
gnarled trees that stood about them in an orange light. 
I wonder if the Greatest Emperor, when he im- 
agined that tremendous skyline and those deep 
glowing arches and those strange shrines, ever re- 
‘membered how little and forlorn a thing would lie 
beneath that thunderous magnificence. Did it seem 
probable to him that the pale and brittle bones of 
‘a man could be the seed of such a flower? 
__ As we rode away along an avenue of tall stone 
‘monsters, the other tombs stood humbly round the 
valley, taking their cue from the tomb of the Great- 
est Emperor—or perhaps only the vainest. 
Great and small alike, they sent after us across 
the gold-red heads of the kao-liang, the shimmer 
of their rippling yellow roofs, the royal glance of 
a silenced yet unfading order across a world un- 
faithful to its allegiance. 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER 


OR a week I breathed gold air. For a week 

my eyes were attuned to the light on a golden” 
river with rose-red ripples, running more and more 
fiercely as the days went by. Literally I bathed in © 
yellow, for the bath-taps of the ship, connected 
apparently direct with the Father of Rivers, pro- — 
duced daily nothing but an opaque mustard-colored — 
section of whirlpool into which I plunged optimisti- — 
cally and from which I emerged feeling that at least _ 
I had tried to do my duty as an Anglo-Saxon. 
The Yang-tse, a monster of temperament, was © 
enjoying that autumnal irritation from which many _ 
of us suffer as winter draws in sight. Even during | 
the comparatively peaceful journey up that stout and | 
plebeian section of the river from Hankow to | 
Ichang, I could not look at and realize the speed and _ 
passion of the water without feeling a slight contrac: | 
tion at the roots of my hair. After we left Ichang | 
and began thundering up the gorges I will not dis- | 
guise the fact that my hair stood straight on end, | 
quivering a little at the tips as we curtseyed in a. 
whirlpool or bounced from precipice to precipice, — 
only missing actual contact, as it seemed, by an inch — 


or two. 
76 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER hi 


The rapids are plaited streams of yellow foam; 
their voices are various but always angry. Among 
the rapids the whirlpools build their nests—round 
deep nests lined with dark golden glass and frilled 
with a pale cream-colored lace of foam. To fill 
up the precious space between the rapids and the 
whirlpools, strange ominous convex flowers of 
golden water boil up to the surface. 

Water, as we were all taught at our mothers’ 
knees, finds its own level, but the Yang-tse does not. 
It is super-water and scorns levels. Its whirlpools 
are as deep as craters, its rapids dig out abrupt val- 
leys and pile up high tablelands of water to com- 
pensate for the valleys. Often at the feet of the 
cliffs on either side there is a sudden drop, or step 
down, in the water, and then a river within a river, 
much lower than the rest, divided from us by a per- 
manent wave, and traveling absurdly the wrong 
way. Sometimes the junks were able, with their 
transparent, broad-shouldered sails spread, to fol- 
low the course of this rebel stream against the direc- 
tion of the main river. More often they were pulled 
by dozens—scores—of trackers. 

_ The trackers, sometimes in bright blue, sometimes 
in nothing at all, were strung like gay beads across 
the breast of the cliff, strung on a long string, one 
end of which was slung to a junk’s mast. We sel- 
dom approached them closely enough to realize 
their humanity against their enormous backgrounds, 
to hear them chanting, to see them straining and 


78 THE LITTLE WORLD 


slipping, bent, with their heads as low as their) 
knees. But we could see more clearly the down- 
coming junks, for they took the middle of the stream 
and followed the will of the water. They swerved. 
and span and plunged their bows into the water,| 
their high golden sterns kicking and heaving. And 
we could hear the chanting and the shouting of the 
rowers and see the orchestral gestures of the leader, 
who danced and cursed amidships, directing their, 
rowing. 

Nobody is master of these wild waters. As our 
captain often remarked—“It’s all a matter of 
joss... .’’ Only the great yellow cliffs dare contra- 
dict the river, and they often suffer for their daring.) 
Through the clefts in the shattered clifis you can see 
perspectives of mountains, heather-red and patched 
with woods and precipices. One village, divided in| 
two by circumstances, flattened itself on two ledges 
connected by a ladder—two niches in the immense 
bald surface of a cliff. Up one sheer cliff a trail of 
niches seemed as faint to us as the track of an insect 
on fine sand. Legend claims that an attacking 
army cut those niches under cover of secret night 
and appeared, in a formidable halo of incredibility 
in the midst of the unsuspecting little enemy towr 
on the brow of the cliff. Legends blow about thi 
noisy air of the river. There is a temple like 7 
painted and enamelled toy at the head of a long 
shady flight of stone steps askew—and the bells o 
that’ temple, it seems, ring of themselves whei 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER 79 


there is a fire among its little huddled attendant 
villages. Another temple has a bow! which used to 
be filled with rice in answer to prayer—until a 

greedy devotee brought a barrel to replace the bowl, 

and thus rebuffed and checked forever the kindly 
hospitality of God. 

' Every night men from our ship swam to shore 

with a rope which, helped by our searchlight, they 

made fast to rocks and stakes. The most beautiful 

night was spent at Wu-shan, the guardian town of 
the longest gorge. To one steep bank of the river 

clung the little templed town of Wu-shan, its lower 

houses on stilts ankle-deep in the swift water, its 

upper houses turning curved roofs upward to the 

sunset. A slender pagoda was outlined against the 

dale bronze mountains. Over a finger of the river 

2 one-spanned bridge, humped like a caterpillar, 

sprang, and, from the summit of this bridge, a tiny 

square guardhouse looked down at its reflection. 

Behind the other bank of the river the sun sank 

‘n gold and rose. And the carved black outlines 

of a horned temple, steeply built, leaned against 

that sky. There was a tangle of old trees cut out 

of the near edge of the sky and a guardian griffin ° 
threw out its proud chest in the direction of Wu- 

shan across the river. 

There was war in Szechuan—if you could call it 
war, for there were no posters about war. No pic- 
‘ures of strapping heroes encouraged those who 
elt neither strapping nor heroic to find out what 


80 THE LITTLE WORLD 


tonic war could do for them. In Szechuan war ad- 
vertised itself; one saw the war and one saw the 
heroes—which was unfortunate from the point of 
view of those who deal in war. Even the losers 
advertised the war. I watched them go, in proces- 
sion but not in triumph, face downward down the 
river, threading their forlorn way through the 
plaited rapids, pausing indifferently in the quiet 
reaches where the water enfolded them like gold 
silk. I saw the less fortunate losers come to seek 
the protection of the mountains, the wounded slung 
painfully on poles carried by unfriendly coolies 
forced into service, or riding on bleeding and ex. 
hausted dying ponies. ‘The unwounded also car- 
ried significant news of the glory of war; their 
sunken eyes saw nothing, their faces were like crum- 
pled paper, they wavered on their feet. Only those 
of the vanquished who escaped first were strong 
enough to revenge themselves upon a cruel world. 
Like locusts they paused in their passing and where 
they paused desolation entered. 

When I first saw the steep villages opposite 
Chungking, they stood in calmness and isolation 
among their ricefields. The blue smoke oozed do- 
mestically through the old thatch of the huts; under 
the eaves of the little shrines the joss-sticks bowed 
down among their ashes before the small golden | 
faces of the gods; the clamor of the children in ir- 
responsible village schools was mixed with the plain-. 
tive drums of the temples; the flooded ricefields in 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER 81 


scimitar and serpent shapes were dyked one above 
the other up the slopes at the feet of the mountains 

and, across and across those narrow fields, like slow 
_barges, the drooping buffaloes pulled ploughs 
through the water. The ploughmen sang; only 
their sunburned upper halves showed above the 
water and those upper halves were made the more 
grotesque by hats as big as cartwheels. 

When I saw those villages last, they were. 
haunted; they were very silent; the children and the 
bells were not heard. No longer did the buffaloes 
‘work for their singing masters in the fields; their 
“masters were themselves now slaves and beasts of 
burden. All countrymen—even the old men and 
‘the little boys—who had not been quick enough in 
finding places of concealment were caught and driven 
‘away before the bayonets of the army—itself a 
‘driven and hunted thing. I saw the peaceful men 
of those villages standing with blank dead faces, 
‘roped one to the other in long strings, waiting for 

their burdens. I saw them with backs bent under 
igreat loads, staggering before their captors, beaten 
‘or prodded with bayonets when they faltered or fell. 
‘I saw one man-hunt that seemed to me like a night- 
‘mare. Across the river the victors were coming 
‘into Chungking; the firing was incessant; we could 
‘see a little fluttering blue cloud of townspeople run- 
ning ineffectually up and down at the foot of the 
city wall; every boat that dared to cross the river 
“was surrounded by little abrupt fountains where the 


82 THE LITTLE WORLD 


shots struck the water. High above our heads stray. 
shots mewed and whined. Up the steep bank on 
our side of the river the last fugitives of the de-| 


feated army were slowly making their way; they 


seemed hardly conscious of being i in danger, they 
were beyond panic, they went in little reeling groups 
and said no word, they were too weak to hurry. 
And I watched one who turned back towards the 
river; he could not carry even what remained to 
him of his possessions; he must seek a slave. A 
group of river boatmen, leaning from the sterns of 
junks moored to the shore, were arresting the flight 
of the dead soldiers floating downstream and taking 
from them boots and capes. Towards these coolies 
the exhausted soldier walked in uncertain curves; 
his chin was on his breast. Without seeming to 
look at the boatmen he made his way towards them 
_with a blind purpose. Without seeming to look 
at him, the boatmen herded nervously together and 
retreated to a further junk—and a further and a 
still further as he followed. There was silence| 
among them and no hurry. Any one of the boatmer 
could have knocked the soldier down; he seemed tc 
hold his rifle quite without purpose. On thé 
furthest junk, the soldier, still, as it seemed, withou! 
raising his eyes, chose a man and drove him off 
As far as I could see or hear there was no threa 
and no protest. 

With the irritating detachment of Europeans it it 
China I went to buy a pen in Chungking while thi 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER 83 


victorious army was at the city gates. Most of the 
shops were shuttered; most of the townspeople 
stood listening like frightened rabbits at the doors 
of their bolt-holes. One shop let us in to review 
ts stock of pens, and while we were there a most 
strange and stormy sound of running bare feet came 
ap the listening street and a crowd of terrified citi- 
rens ran by, making no sound except the soft whis- 


rering sound of their running. The proprietor of 


he booth in which we were ran a barrier across 


) 1is door and disappeared. We sat down unobtru- 


ively in front of the little altar at the back of the 


-yooth. It seemed as if the street outside had fallen 
lead after that rush; the little bannered, crooked, 


unnelled houses compressed their lips and stared 
_ lankly. 


_ Finally two small soldiers of the advancing army 
ame up the street with their bayonets pointing them 


on. Their faces were fixed in gross apoplectic ap- 


<0 = 
ee ee eee 


alled expressions; they did not look to either side. 
_ When they had passed, the street, after some mo- 
ients, relaxed. We made our way to the river 
ate. It was shut, but by mingling with. some op- 
ortune retreating cavalry, we found our way out. 
Je sat on the mud shore among the neutral crowds 
© beggars. I remember I had a bag of sweets and, 
a offering some to a little naked beggar boy, was 
rf tarly smothered in a charge of applicants for more. 
ith other fugitive civilian citizens we rather dis- 
onsolately reviewed the probabilities of getting 


84 THE LITTLE WORLD 


across the river before the fighting should begin.) 
Every junk, every sampan, almost every plank, was 
commandeered by escaping soldiers. All the boat. 
men were hidden. We fawned upon the powers of 
darkness; we tried to step unobtrusively into the 
soldiers’ sampans as they left the shore; we talked 
richly of money. Not money but a chance of life 
was the only currency in Chungking just then. 
Wherever we went groups of Chinese civilians 
watched and followed, hoping that wherever Brit, 
ish arrogance might lead the way, they might fol. 
low with safety. But they were disappointed. We 
were rather ignominiously rescued by an English” 
man in a motor boat. And as I looked back at thi 
less fortunate refugees left without friends upot| 
that filthy shore, I was sorry to look so insolenth 
sateinis ' 
The firing began then and, I think, by the tim 
the moon came up there were no losers left i) 
Chungking to regret their loss. From the mountain 
some of them looked down at the flames dancin 
about the city of their failure; the others went fac | 
downward down the river and never looked up, ¢ 
lay where they had fallen about the city gates, ri 
lieved at last of the horror of being hunted throug | 
those blind and twisted streets. 

The war in Chungking provided cover for tt 
smuggling of opium on board our departing shi 
Almost every Chinese passenger and sailor had | 
hand in this. The chief officer spent the first di 


petri 


THE YANG-TSE RIVER 85 


| 
‘ 


‘of the return journey in sniffing his way from cache 
to cache. He was a keen-nosed man and by even- 
ing his cabin was overflowing with confiscated opium 
in every form. 

' When we tied up that evening, half a dozen 
Chinese soldiers came on board to welcome us and 
at the same time to say that any opium we had on 
board would be in turn welcome to their officers. 
Our captain, with Western terseness, took out his 
watch and gave his visitors one minute to disappear 
in. At the end of the minute, he explained, he pro- 
posed to blow the alarm syren for a crew from a 
neighboring British gunboat. ‘The poor soldiers 
spent their minute uncomfortably in wondering 
whether a beating at the hands of English sailors 
was preferable to a beating at the hands of their 
own opium-hungry officers. At the end of the 
minute, the syren squawked and one of the sol- 
liers, feeling that something must be done to pre- 
serve the dignity of Chinese arms, stepped forward 
ind, with a neat snakelike gesture, stabbed our Chief 
Gngineer. The engineer did not at once realize 
vhat had happened to him; he was stabbed through 
he muscles under his arm. He was able to join in 
. shout of warning to us. For there we were, an 
‘xasperating superior British audience, standing 
na bovine ring round the scene of the poor soldiers’ 
lilemma. The soldiers, noticing their public situ- 
ition, became more and more annoyed with the 
3ritish and all their ways; they climbed quickly back 


86 THE LITTLE WORLD 


‘nto their boat and, with another dramatic gesture, 
turned their revolvers upon us—upon us—a little 
gentle herd of inquisitive globetrotters, armed only 
with cameras, field-glasses and Mosquitol. 

I never in my life saw such a sudden and com 
plete slump in Anglo-Saxon superiority. Personally 
I jumped about thirty feet to the other side of the 
deckhouse. The deck became a tangle of respect 
able British citizens, dignified but one short secon¢ 
before, now intertwined with Chinese stewards be 
hind the flimsy canvas deckchairs. But no shot wa 
fired. The searchlight, that most rude and discon 
certing weapon, turned its eye upon the enemy. Th 
squawk of the gunboat’s syren was heard above th 
roar of the river. The soldiers, standing in thei 
released boat and with their revolvers still pointing! 
as it seemed, at my fifth rib, were snatched away b- 
the eager river. They dwindled like an unnaturi 
dream in the unwinking glare of the searchlight. 


| INDIA 
I 


"TWAHIS is the thing that I remember best about 
| Ceylon. Along the road beside the sea to the 
salle Face Hotel, little naked boys lie in wait for 
he rickshas. “They keep pace with you, their lit- 
le fat feet fly like windmills and beat the ground 
wo or three times to every stride of the ricksha 
aan. When they grow up they will be ricksha men 
oo, but at present they make that noble calling a 
ttle ridiculous. The ricksha man rebukes them but 
hey cannot be snubbed; they must do their stunts 
efore they admit defeat. ‘Is a lung way to Tippe- 
erry ... good-bay Luster Squah ...” Won- 
erful to be able to carry such a true little thin voice 
n such twinkling frantic legs. Yellow flowers are 
hrown in your lap to show that the stunt is over. 
hortness of leg will tell in the end. They fall 
ack and the ricksha springs forward in renewed 
ignity. 

I have always suffered from diverted attention. 
Mf the two distinct general compartments of my 
und, the one into which the sun most rarely shines 


3 the one reserved for soul-stirring impressions. 
87 


88 THE LITTLE WORLD 


The other compartment, filled with little curious 
happenings connected with everything or nothing, 
with spiders and spaghetti, boarding house Keep- 
ers and beetles, puppies and Prime Ministers, is 
constantly in use, with the blinds always drawn up. 

While it is possible, I am told, to absorb the Taj 
Mahal, hold it for a time in the heart and then give 
it back to the world as a sonata or a sonnet, delight 
can be found at the same time in the beetles and the 
lizards and the tourists that wriggle in and out of 
its crannies. I suppose that noble people, on see. 
ing the Taj, concentrate entirely on the sonnet 
department and walk about on the lizards and the 
beetles and the tourists without noticing them. Yet 
in my case, I must confess that if a monkey and ‘ 
minaret were competing for my attention, 4 
monkey would almost certainly win. 

My memory of Akbar’s tomb at Sikanderabad 1 
thrown out of perspective by the intrusion of a tre: 
in the garden which was quivering with the presenc 
of a great many peculiarly charming gibbons. The 
had gray velvet coats and black earnest faces. On 
realized suddenly that there were hundreds of liv 
gibbons to one dead Akbar. From every loophol 
in their great green fortress, their kindly perplexe 
faces looked out between black hands parting th 
leaves of the tree. 

I do not think I shall lightly forget the T: | 
Mahal. It stands on the horizon of my memor 
like a tall cloud with an opal glow on it. But 


INDIA 89 


more can I forget the expression of the gharry horses 
waiting outside for the tourists. There is some- 
thing about gharry horses that reminds me of the 
agonies of sympathy I went through as a child at 
the village races, when I saw the milkman’s little 
fat worthy pony lined up for the start side by side 
with the squire’s thoroughbred exquisites. ‘Not a 
chance, not a chance—yet it’s preening itself, it’s 
imagining how it will look with the blue cockade 
of honor behind its ear. ‘After all,’ it’s thinking, 
‘stranger things have happened. ..’” And still, 
now I am grown-up, when I drive through the 
streets of Calcutta listening to talk about the paci- 
fication of Islam and now and then making a keenly 
ntelligent comment like, “Great Scot, but that was 
Mr. Lloyd George’s fault, wasn’t it . . . ” all the 
time I am looking at the faces of the gharry horses. 
They are vulgar, necessary little horses and nobody 
fastidious admires them. But they wear blue bead 
aecklaces just behind their ears and they trot with 
an industrious and wistfully hopeful look as if they 
were saying, ‘Well, what price these darn thorough- 
dreds and Rolls Royces now? I’ve got my beads 
on...’ And they smile at each other—rather 
i forced, tentatively boasting smile—when a buf- 
falo goes by. ‘Poor old‘slowcoach . . . no beads 
fomhim. .. .” 

' Of course there are also the sad members of the 
eef family to be sorry for, but there is seldom 
nuch life or vanity in their eyes. Though of course 


go THE LITTLE WORLD 


bulls were the heroes of my visit to Benares. The 
holy bulls stand at Benares street corners, horn to 
horn, eating sacred marigolds which they have no 
intention of paying for and cynically discussing the 
passing pilgrims and globetrotters. They come and 
go at no man’s orders; they are the tigers of that 
jungle of temples. Holiness crowns them—yet you 
can see they think nothing of holiness. They wear 
expedient holiness for the comfort of it, as the 
medieval popes used to wear it. On the steer 
crowded bank of the Ganges, priests dance anc 
howl and gash themselves and lie on beds of spike; 
and mix their hair with mud—and the imperiou 
smooth bulls watch them passionlessly, saying oni 
to another, ‘““There—that’s what comes of takin 
things too seriously. . . ’’ On the opposite banl 
of the Ganges there is nothing and nobody, becaus 
of the legend that anyone chancing to die on tha 
side is born again as an ass or a woman. But th 
bulls probably warn each other that any bull wh 
dies in Benares risks being born again as a mat 
For they alone in Benares do not follow and cr 
after death. At the edge of the river the pilgrim 
bathe; they dip and they cry out and dip agair 
the holy glitter of the river wraps them away froi 
everything but prayer—prayer that some day deat 
in this holy place may crown their pinnacle of hol 
ness. Sometimes they are so importunate that th¢ 
succeed; among the thousands of pilgrims, of who, 
so many are old, there are always some who fir 


INDIA QI 


Jear death on the edge of the brown water. And 
these, after lying in state on pyres among flames on 
1 ledge of the riverbank, are given to the river itself 
-o carry away and seal with holiness. 
' But death is not the river’s only blessing. A bull 
and I leaned on a wall and watched a marriage 
'n the water. A man and a woman knotted their 
robes together and dipped down side by side, and 
as they dipped a little boy priest threw marigolds 
over them. ‘‘Waste of good marigolds... ” 
yrumbled the bull. But I pointed out something 
‘hat I knew would annoy him more—a cow, in the 
distance, being revérently bathed in the holy river 
dy a peasant and his wife. The bull tossed his 
aorns. “Good Lord,” he snorted. ‘‘A cow—a fe- 
nale cow—what are we coming to? I thought 
[India was sound on the feminist question at 
el 

Cows in India occupy the same position in society 
us women did in England before they got the vote. 
Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life 
was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of 
nan to put pedestals at her feet. While she was 
falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told 
that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, 
so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was 
oractically out of earshot. The cow in India finds 
ler position equally lofty and tiresome. You prac- 
acally never see a happy cow in India. Nobody 
zast of Suez, of course, ever dares to say anything 


92 THE LITTLE WORLD 


even remotely carnivorous to a cow, yet there is 
something in her luminously myopic eye and in her: 
cheek grooved by a perpetual tear, that suggests | 
that her life is empty of delight. She must know: 
that she holds half India’s politics in the hollow of. 
her hoof; like our mothers, she must have been con- 
stantly told how incalculable is her indirect influ’ 
ence on her country’s destiny—yet she is humiliated: 
and unsatisfied. ? 

And oxen... Seeing them crawling moodily’ 
along, buried from stem to stern under an out.) 
rageous superstructure of dry goods, the weight of 
which seems to bear more heavily on their necks, 
than on the waggon wheels, one cannot think that) 
they derive any real pleasure from the knowledge) 
that no orthodox Hindu would eat them. It can 
give them no more than a passing and superficial” 
pleasure to feel that their masters revere them 
enough to carve elaborate freehand curves in their 
hides. The ox must often reflect bitterly on the 
fact that the gods, after starting well by setting his 
family on a pedestal of sacred tradition, should 
have spoilt the whole thing by giving him a hump. 
That hump is the undoing of the Indian branch of 
the beef family. Nobody could possibly see that 
hump without wishing to fit a yoke in front of it. 
No other physical feature has ever been so obviously 
designed for the use of industrious man as is the 
hump. Divorce the hump from the yoke and where 
is the use of it? The crows, to be sure, are in the 


INDIA 93 


habit of using it as a vantage point on which to 
stand while surveying the rest of the animal in search 
of ticks—but this can hardly be said to constitute 
a raison d’étre for the hump. No, if you wear a 
hump you have to crown it with a yoke, and if you 
wear a yoke and have a heartless yodelling master 
sitting on a shaft all day, pulling at a string that is 
threaded through your nose and beating you on a 
sore place on your buttock—where is the fun of be- 
longing to a reverend family? You might just as 
well be a common lay buffalo. 
Yet, with all this, anyone can see that the buf- 
falo is a long way behind the ox in the social scale. 
There is no compensation for being born a buffalo; 
he has no lofty traditions at all—and he knows it. 
The only legend in his family connects him bluntly 
with Sin. You may often see rude caricatures of 
his homely and unlucky figure ramping in and out 
of Hindu pictures in company with headless bodies 
and bodiless heads and demons and women and 
other attributes of hell. Even this doubtful sport 
is, one fears, purely legendary; no’ decent self- 
respecting demon would ever condescend to ramp 
with a buffalo. The buffalo knows that; he knows 
everything about himself; he has no illusions—you 
can read that in his eyes. The yoke wedged under 
his horns prevents him from looking round to see 
what a poor figure his partner is cutting, but he 
needs no reminder—he knows. He knows that he 
and his partner and his mother and all his family 


94 THE LITTLE WORLD 


are the plainest and least dainty creatures on the 
face of the earth—with the possible exception of! 
the wart-hog. Even when he was a calf, his mother 
used to contemplate him dubiously. Many people 
have loved cows and even poets have mentioned! 
them, but nobody has ever loved a buffalo. You 
could not love or respect a creature which, dur- 
ing the whole course of evolution, has never decided 
whether to be a bald or a hairy beast. After earnest 
study of the faces of the buffaloes on Chowringhee,| 
I cannot even say that they have beautiful souls. Of 
almost anyone hopelessly plain, it is pretty safe to) 
say—‘‘Yes, not exactly pretty—but how code 
hearted ...”” Not so of the unfortunate buffalo, 
No heart or soul shines out of his eyes at all; they 
are matt eyes, anguished, but not poetically so. 
Sometimes buffaloes are seen sitting like desert 
islands in ponds, or, better still, in running streams 
with miniature breakers surging against their bleak 
headlands. At such times a faint smear of tranquil 
lity, so to speak, may be seen by the keen observer | 
on the horny surface of the buffalo’s eye and in the 
twitch of his sad unstarched ear, but there is nothing | 
at all radiant about the tout ensemble. Sometimes — 
the water is so deep that only a mudcoated nose _ 
and a few eyelashes are seen above the surface. In| 
this pose the buffalo is seen to best advantage, but | 
even so, no one but a crocodile would bother tc 
look twice at him. | 

The buffalo’s only attempt at vanity or individu 


INDIA 95 


ality is expressed in the cut and angle of his horns. 
‘Most buffaloes wear their horns with pessimism 
‘and without chic. But some try feebly to imitate 
‘tthe brisker angle affected by their neighbors, the 
‘oxen. I once saw a buffalo with one horn up and 
one down; the effect was original and almost 
waggish. I saw another whose horns made an al- 
most perfect circle above his yoke, and the tips over- 
lapped. If that buffalo had been mine I would have 
tied the tips together with a pale blue hair-ribbon. 
And then all the other buffaloes on Chowringhee 
would have seen it and smiled at last, saying, ‘“There 
zoes the one member of our race whom somebody 
‘oves.”’ 

' A buffalo fainted at my feet once. I heard a 
joise like a train gathering steam and realized that 
't was the stertorous breathing of a fainting buffalo. 
‘ts attendant was beating it but it was past minding 
hat. I went into the Army and Navy Stores and 
isked what facilities they had for reviving fainting 
vuffaloes. The military gentleman at the door said, 
‘None.’ He seemed a little ruffled. Nevertheless, 
‘fter some argument, I re-emerged at the head of 
' file of coolies carrying the Society’s fire-buckets. 
“hese we emptied on to the buffalo and forced a 
ew drops into its drooping mouth. It revived im- 
1ediately and proceeded on its way, saying to itself, 
No, nobody loves me . . . even when I faint I 
m made a fool of on the public streets by stray 
emale novelists .. , ”” 


96 THE LITTLE WORLD 


All social functions are distorted for me by my 
eye for the domestic lizard. Every room in Cal- 
cutta has its lizard, a pale, languid, fawn-colored 
creature with a throbbing throat, who meditates on 
vertical or upside-down surfaces and occasionally 
expresses his conclusions in a very loud unexpected 
voice. The lizards eat the insects in the rooms, 
but the one in my bedroom was rather a slacker. 
He refused to tackle an enormous spider, like an 
animated eight-legged horse-chestnut, which inso- 
lently made its home on my lizard’s beat. I do 
not know how the lizards of a house apportion the 
various rooms, but I think that drawing-room 
lizards are selected for the loudness of their voices. 
Often at a party, when I think I have been listen- 
ing to my hostess complaining of high prices, I find 
myself replying to a remark by the lizard. A sport- | 
ing lizard with a good figure and a well-wielded | 
accurate tongue can hold my attention against any | 
rivalry. And even when my mind wanders from 
that it is only in order to devote itself to the thin | 
didactic wailing of the kites above the roof or the | 
hoarse cursings and drycleaning operations of the | 
gray-hooded crows outside the window or the hys- | 
teria of the brain-fever bird—‘‘So there, so there, 
so THERE ...” When I was trying to be af- 
fable at a garden-party once, a kite swooped down 
and removed a rather valued sandwich from my, 
plate, knocking my hat awry as it did so. Evidently 
even the kites know how much undue attention I 


INDIA 97 


pay to the world that is really theirs rather than 
‘mine. So they have no reverence for me. 
[went on a Christmas visit to eleven elephants in 
Rajputana. I had never met an elephant as man 
to man—or elephant to elephant—before, except 
of course in the Zoo where they are rather con- 
sciously exotic. But there in the jungle in Rajpu- 
tana, nothing was allowed to be exotic—not even 
the jewelled Maharajah into the radius of whose 
immense hospitality I was accidentally swept. Our 
gorgeous camp, which had a hint of old leisurely 
pretty battlefields about it, the glittering turbaned 
soldier at the door of each frilled and painted tent, 
the huge tall waggonette drawn by two trotting 
vamels, the cramped, mazy, romantic ways of the 
sastle, the little yellow capital city of the kingdom— 
hese things were not exotic—boxed in, as they were, 
vy that clear burning sky and that infinite round 
1orizon. Large bald-faced wistful monkeys stood 
yut conspicuously against the low yellow wilderness 
hat—in Rajputana—is called the jungle; blackbuck 
ind nilghai frequented the near horizon unashamed; 
ackals sat as publicly as dogs in the shade of shriv- 
lled shrubs, and as for the peacocks and the king- 
shers and the hoopoes, they took upon themselves 
he duty of flowers in that sad unbounded garden. 
So that when, for the first time, I motored to a 
leet with the intention of watching falcons and 
_ tame lynx bring hares or tigers—(and what 
ot)—to my feet, it did not seem fantastic to find 


98 THE LITTLE WORLD 


myself surrounded by a high wall of benevolent 
elephant faces. I don’t know anybody else with 
such a humorous face as an elephant; each of its 
little eyes is set in a wreath of smiles, and when 
it lies down to let you mount—forelegs straight 
out forward, back legs straight out backward—it is 
a sort of idealized Fatty Arbuckle. 

I chose my mount for the hunt, a small merry ele- 
phant with a kind of antimacassar painted in scarlet 
on its brow. I climbed on to its obligingly recumbent 
form by means of a ladder and sat on a canvas pad, 
holding on desperately to the waistbelt of a liveried 
minion who sat astride of the elephant’s neck wield- 
ing a bi-dent—(if there is no such word as bi- 
dent—why not?). My elephant had a playful way 
of trumpeting through a madly agitated trunk when » 
it was either bored or excited. The sound was 
rather like changing gears on a Ford car and the. 
result was that passers-by were soaked to the skin. 

The field consisted of about forty guests, some | 
mounted on horses, some on ponies and some on — 
elephants. The elephant contingent was sub-divided 
into Olders and Wisers, sitting in furnished pavilions 
on tall, slow elephants of the super-dreadnaught | 
type, and Youngers and Silliers like me, who took 
the destroyers’ part in the fleet, rattling up and 
down on the saddles of little rampageous elephants-. 
made-for-two. There was also the Maharajah, 
carrying a handsome eaglelike bird on his wrist, 
a large number of minions, carrying hooded hawks, 


INDIA .99 


and an oxcart carrying an irascible-looking blind- 
folded lynx. The oxcart hurried industriously after 
the hunt but always arrived too late, to the increas- 
ing annoyance of the lynx. 

Whenever the hawks were released, the whole 
field cheered loudly. Perhaps this well-meant en- 
couragement disconcerted the hawks for, although 
the ground was knee-deep in game—hares, part- 
ridges and deer splashing on all sides from under 
our charging feet—the birds either glued themselves 
to the sky or else flew straight to the highest tree in 
sight and sat on it, moodily putting their feathers 
in order. Nearly all our time was spent in luring 
sulky hawks from trees by means of false decoy- 
oirds flapped about the ground with string. The 
slephants were much more keen, running heavily 
after every hare they saw and trying to soar after 
the soaring partridges. My elephant nervously 
anrooted and stuffed into its mouth young shrubs 
is it thundered along, trumpeting breathlessly be- 
‘ween mouthfuls. I was sorry that no hare was 
iporting enough to allow itself to be caught by these 
neans. | 
_ Trying to forget its empty bag, my elephant led 
he stately procession home at sunset through the 
ittle yellow sandy town that is the capital of our 
Maharajah’s kingdom. In the torchlit booths the 
itizens bowed and blessed the procession in slow 
ingsong. The proud prudish faces of the camels 
eemed to boast of their gaudy burdens as they 


100 THE LITTLE WORLD 


passed us; little dusty children, naked except for 
silver anklets, asked for alms in high metallic voices - 
and, outside a temple, two fierce urgent bells rang | 
one against the other. 

I watched the elephants in lighter vein next day, | 
running a race. Their riders were mostly nervous | 
amateurs who knew no word of elephant language 
and saw no difference between Hut and Hell. (If. 
this should meet the eye of an elephant, I hope,he 
will excuse my spelling, which is purely phonetic.) © 
The elephants smiled in a long row but, smile they i 
never so wisely, they entirely failed to grasp the. 
theory of the entertainment. They thought that 
they were taking part in a kind of royal musical 
ride and when, at the sound of the pistol shot, they 
moved forward with serene dignity, not even the 
babel of shrieks and curses from the amateurs on 
their backs could induce them to fall out of line. 
In a perfect row they started; in a perfect row they, 
proceeded very slowly along the track, pensively. 
waving their trunks to keep one another in step; 
in a perfect row they breasted the tape at the other 
end. And then they all sighed happily, satisfied to 
feel that they had done their duty. It was the most 
impressive race I ever saw. | 


II 


ENGAL’S Legislative Council—her Ship of 
State, for the first time manned by Indians 
was launched by the Duke of Connaught in Febru 


INDIA 101 


‘ary, 1921. Among other Calcutta women I had 
‘permission to witness this historic ceremony. Never- 
‘theless, though I and the other women put on our 
most ceremonious hats or saris and flourished grass- 
‘green passes, the authorities decreed, on second 
‘thoughts, that the occasion was too historic for the 
‘eye of woman. 
Women come to India, I understand, either be- 
‘cause they are married to empire builders or because 
they want to be. They are expected to learn to 
play bridge well, to dance well in the manner of 
about five years ago and to know what to wear at 
the races. To take an interest in India is, on the 
other hand, most unladylike. A nice woman may’ 
go so far as to say sometimes, ‘‘My dear, I’m sim- 
oly terrified of these fiendish revolutionaries and 
things, I sometimes think they'd like to blow us all 
ap in our beds.”” A kind of imperial district visit- 
ng is also permitted and one may hear a Perfect 
uady talk about ‘My little Thursday Ranees,” to 
vhom she teaches leather work or basket making. 
3ut to find a woman going further than this, or to 
lear her admit that she has come to India to see 
‘ndia, will make any well-brought-up empire builder 
lush. The younger he is, the pinker he blushes. 
India is the only country I ever visited where 
he young are truly Victorian. Young people in 
ndia still talk of chaperones and minxes and not- 
uite-of-our-class-my-dear. They share with their 
eniors their confusion and dislike at the mention of 


102 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Epstein and Women-in-Men’s-Professions and Ber. © 
nard Shaw and sitting on the floor and the Labor . 
Party. There are no Youngers and Silliers in India 
to worry the Olders and Wisers. Everyone remem- | 
bers Kipling. The only adventure left is a flirtation © 
with someone else’s husband or wife and these flir- 
tations seem always to be quotations from Kipling— 
deliciously shocking. Perfect Ladies are everywhere — 
found being shocked at other Perfect Ladies on 
grounds that would make King’s Road, Chelsea, — 
smile. 
Nearly everyone in India simply adores reading 
or drawing or music or pokerwork or just Art. But) 
the men are too busy Keeping Fit in the intervals. 
of empire-building to indulge themselves in their 
delight. And the women—“Of course, my dear, 
there’s nothing I should like better but I have a 
houseful of servants and a kiddie to look after and 
then one simply has to go to the club in the after- 
noon—I tell you I never have a second.” | 
And this from men and women whose youth has 
found them in one of the most fantastic countries 
in the world. ; 
Women were therefore allowed, on the occasion — 
of the opening of Bengal’s first Indian Legislative 
Council, to sit and look as charming as possible 
on the stairs, to see the pretty uniforms, to curtsey 
to the Duke as he arrived and to listen to a far-off 
beelike sound which was the noise of the Ship 3 
State being launched. 


— 


INDIA 103 


_ The launching of a ship is usually marked by the 
reaking of a bottle of wine, but over Bengal’s ship 
hey broke casks of honey. Everyone spoke afta- 
ilities, the atmosphere was sticky with sugar—even 
ye banished women could grasp that. Where do 
he optimists go when their speeches are done? 
eople only seem to hope in public. 

_ It goes without saying—except in the papers, 
there nothing goes without saying—that the Duke 
f£ Connaught opened the Council in a way that jus- 
fied the loud applause that even reached us in 
ur exile. But I was haunted all the time by the 
ossibilities of an impossible dream—of another 
ind of opening of a democratic council. What if 
ais Indian Parliament—representing, it is said, 
ae voice of India—had been opened by the voice- 
tss Indian, if a little thin dust-colored peasant, 
aosen on the Unknown Soldier principle, had stood 
1 that hall—the hall being empty of pretty soldiers? 
Te would have thrown out his arms, (I dreamed), 
nd cried, “This is my voice... At last I have 
ound my voice. . . .” 

It was, of course, a silly dream, for the affair 
vould not have been half so pretty without the uni- 
orms. And there would have been no occasion for 
ie Perfect Ladies to wear their best hats. I remem- 
ered putting on my best hat a week or two before 
1 order to go and see Mahatma Gandhi. It was 
yst on him—in fact I found that he had only ac- 
orded me the interview under the impression that 


104 THE LITTLE WORLD 


I was aman. He treated me as a saint might treat 
an uninstructed cherubim.» He was very gentle and 
tired-looking; his nearly white hair was cropped 
on a high narrow head. His chin was bowed upon 
his breast and he looked upward at me out of sunken 
eyes over a ridge of brow. He talked to me in 
extremely accurate, almost forensic, English and did 
not at all want to hear my comments. If he, in his 
white homespun, looking with eyes that did not 
see politeness, had opened that council, I think our 
sweet words would have fallen on dumbness and 
our pretty hats and uniforms and French dresses 
would have dissolved in sombre Indian dust. 

A few days later, wisely disguising myself, not, 
this time, as a Perfect Lady, but as the Press, | 
found my way into the Council hall again. This 
time I had a commanding view of a waving field of 
turbans and fezzes, diversified by some examples of 
the British national head-dress—the bald spot on 
the top. 

Sir Shamsul Huda, the President, the Portia-like 
effect of whose clothes was rather contradicted by 
his fine gray beard, was obviously suffering from the 
natural doubt of the débutant. In this feeling he 
was evidently not alone for, from beginning to end, 
the proceedings were like a game of which nobody 
knows the rules. One or two Englishmen had evi- 
dently been poring over the Encyclopedia at the 
Parliamentary Procedure page, and helpfully flut- 
tered from minister to minister, from member to — 


INDIA 105 


member, explaining sometimes what should be done 
but more often what should not be done—generally 
after someone had begun to do it. Whenever a 
member asked a question, a minister rose to explain 
why that question did not arise, on which all the 
members’ faces fell. There was a natural desire 
to debate matters which did not lie within the 
province of the Council but had already been set- 
tled by the Government of India. The Council 
was verbally feeling its way round its boundaries, 


_and much precious tongue-power was wasted on the 


process. 
The first division in the life of the Council was 
taken on a question of salary and was a great suc- 


cess as a diversion. One or two members actually 


skipped with suppressed giggles into the lobby. 

To me, one of the most noticeable things was 
the immediate division between youth and age. It 
is, apparently, a fact that all parliaments automati- 
cally take this formation, even on the first day of 


their lives. And in all parliaments the old men 
_ always seem to have the power on their side. Per- 


\ haps this seeming is their compensation. 


III 


NEVER got a job in India—unless lying in bed 
in hospital, writing desperately sprightly ar- 


ticles for newspapers, can be called a job. But I 
'was very well-befriended, and able, at times, to 


106 THE LITTLE WORLD 


give a rather feeble imitation of a Globetrotter in 
India. The nine Delhis have almost all been looked. 
at by me. In Delhi and in Agra I have stood in’ 
the flowery starry net of light that lies on the air. 
inside the filigree marble screens and windows—: 
those thin lace veils of interthreaded stone. I have 
pitied the poor hermit of Fatehpur-Sikri who, for 
a successful stroke of magic wrought upon a queen, - 
was gratefully punished by having his darling lonely 
hill encrusted and pinnacled with a king’s city, and | 
his body, which must have loved to lie upon grass | 
and flowers, buried at last in a marble and mother- : 
o’-pearl shrine. I was introduced to another mir. : 
acle—Monsieur Clémenceau, as he arrived at a 
station after a tiger shoot. He looked old and cold. 
but proud. “I have shot two tigers,’ he said. | 
wrapping himself jerkily in a big shawl. The Indian | 
who was his host said, ‘‘I have shot a hundred and 
five.” “But... when one is eighty . :-. tym 
tigers . . .”’ said the old Tiger looking for a mo- | 
ment, in spite of his little smile, snubbed like a child. ' 
He cried out for his manservant as though he were 
calling his Nannie, and wanted many things done | 
immediately, all at once. “One of the tigers he shot,” | 
said the Indian, “was already But we did not 
want to hear and the old man pulled his shawl up i 
round his ears. 
I made a little wandering slow journey through | 
Eastern Bengal to the edge of Assam with Cornelia — 
Sorabji who is nearly a fairy but cannot be a Perfect 


INDIA 107 


Lady, since she commits the unladylike mistake of 
»working for and loving India. On the Brahmapoo- 
‘tra River the crescent fishing boats lay like new 
‘moons on the water and between them and the sand- 
-dunes the dwelling boats floated, square and ma- 
‘tronly, with a prosaic noise of clucking hens and 
‘whooping babies, under square-shouldered sails 
‘drawn together at the foot like great honey-colored 
fans. The little plaited houses on the shore had 
humped roofs like the backs of whippets, and the 
mango trees, blossoming, always seemed to have the 
-sun on them, even at twilight or at dawn. I remem- 
ber the velvety stammering music of a flute played 
‘by one of the Indian peasant travelers to an accom- 
paniment of lapping river-ripples and the distant 
‘voices of hauling fishermen. 

, I took another river-journey. The Sunderbunds 
look like a bath sponge on the map, between Cal- 
-cutta and the sea. Clans of primitive Indians, who 
have scarcely heard of, and almost certainly do not 
jappreciate, the blessings of British rule, live among 
those steamy ravelled waterways. Tigers do very 
»well too; the tigers of the Sunderbunds have brought 
‘the name Bengal to the fore in the tiger world. Yet 
-I do not know how man or tiger can grow to normal 
_size in those jungles. The low brush is everywhere 
so knotted and knitted together that one would 
imagine nothing larger than a mouse could penetrate 
‘it. I dare say, however, that there are tunnelled 
_Tuns through the jungle, invisible to travelers on the 


108 THE LITTLE WORLD 


waterways—probably fat low bold runs for the 
tigers, carefully avoided by the tall clever runs of 
men and—apart from either of these two—very 
slender cautious haunted runs for the deer and de- 
fenceless delicate things. 

Monkeys, at any rate, need only the air and a 
few swinging upper twigs for their traveling. There 
were Frenchmen on board our little ship who fired 
at the monkeys. They fired at everything they saw 
but, fortunately, they scarcely ever hit anything. 
The monkeys, fired on, lost their heads like children, 
screamed, threw up their little hands, sprang wildly 
about. A solid mass of public opinion on our boat 
decided against any more firing on monkeys. Yet 
no one was sorry for the crocodiles except me. The 
crocodiles lay asleep on the gray mud banks. Little 
buttonhook smiles of peace and complacency curled 
the corners of their mouths. But our Frenchmen 
fired at them. A crocodile, I am told, cannot be 
killed except by a shot through a special soft bit of 
skin at the throat. But I dare say even Achilles 
could be worried by a mosquito on any part of his 
invulnerable body and certainly a crocodile can be 
very much shocked—1in its sensibilities at least—by 
a rattle of shots against any part of its carefully 
armored figure. Most painful to me was the sight 
of the rude awakening, the dreadful change from 
tranquillity to fury, on the mobile features of the 
hit crocodile. It started to attention, coughed out 
a terrible oath, opened its mouth—which was, if I 


TIGER—TIGER ... 


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i pas 
ps on ra 
<s wo vs : 
=e > 

- = felon *2 

sf ws Co j 
a at ba | ee 
. pee Fre ad 
fy 
F ; 
o a 

= 7 vw 


' ; ‘ al Bhi a (2 7 St 8 is XbA Sa titled ae ; iM ; _* . ‘ye. 
it eT OS Ba A PON TT ee gee Tek ee Pare: al re 


oT 


INDIA III 


may so express it, curiously full of mouth, as thickly 
cushioned as an armchair and only unobtrusively 
frilled with teeth—and, with fishlike agility, whipped 
itself quickly into the water. Its first intention 
obviously was to attack us and revenge itself. But 
after a few seconds the size of our steamboat made 
an impression and the crocodile, after flouncing and 
splashing about in disgust, submerged to sulk. 

There was, as far as I was concerned, one tiger 
in the Sunderbunds—and indeed it is still there, as 
far as I know, for no shot from our boat touched it. 
I had great difficulty in seeing the creature at all. 
On the cry of “Tiger, tiger . . .”’ I looked smartly 
about for something burning bright in the forests 
of the night. I thought I should see a splash as 
blatant as a sunflower against the gray thicket and 
gray mud. There was nothing. I was within a wink 
of seeing absolutely nothing at all. All I can swear 
to was a hinted cringing shape as low—it seemed— 
as a dachshund and in a much duller shade of brown. 
It moved into a dim place, stood for a few seconds 
and then, when the firing began, dissolved like butter 
in a pan. 

After a few days we reached a village which is 
connected by an amphibious light railway with 
Calcutta. By train my friends were obliged to re- 
turn, but I stayed behind, intending to take the next 
boat home and see more tigers. As soon as train 
and friends were gone, I directed Lars Porsena, my 
servant, to make enquiries. He discovered that there 


112 THE LITTLE WORLD 


and that there was either no dak-bungalow or el 
it was out of repair. There were no sahibs or me 


But I found one as I was walking disconsolately 
along the mud shore. He was an engineer and of 
course a Scot. He was talking to an Indian river | 
captain who wore balloon trousers, a kind of fez 
and a very pretty little jade-green sleeveless jacket. 
They were at that moment setting off to navigate 
back to Calcutta a broken steamboat for repairs. 
“She has no lichts,” said the engineer. “There’s 
no beds in herr cabins. She has a leest and lm 
a wee thing doubtful but what she might turra 
turrtle,” but he kindly took on board a cratefull of 
chickens for my consumption, and so we started. 
The whole plan depressed Lars Porsena. He did 
not like me to sleep on a table in a dismantled cabin, 
He did not like me to darn the engineer’s socks by 
the light of a candle stuck in a bottle. He felt that 
British prestige suffered by the fact that hot wate 

had to be brought to my cabin in an old Yellow Cling 
Peach can. 

We lived on chicken that had barely ceased to 
breathe, and whiskeys and sodas. If my appearan 
had not made the crate of chickens necessary, the 
engineer would, I suppose, have dispensed with 
half of the menu. A music-hall joke justified! We 
told each other the stories of our lives; we whi 


INDIA 113 


‘all the tunes we knew to each other and he offended 
‘me by calling old ballad-tunes “heem-tunes.”” Every 
-evening—since we had no lights—we tied up to the 
‘shore and hung our one lantern out. The cries and 
howls and roars and chatterings of the forest 
‘seemed very close. But we never saw a tiger. We 
‘saw glades lighted and shadowed with deer. They 
had delicate triangular heads like flowers on the thin 
‘upright stems of their necks. They watched us pass 
‘with an alert reproachful stare but they never fled, 
‘because we—fortunately—lacked guns. 

One night we had to tie up within range of the 
‘stray waves of the sea. The crippled boat heaved 
‘with a sort of imbecile exaggeration. The Scot 
‘stood thoughtfully about, feeling her pulse, and re- 
marking that we were not more than a few minutes’ 
swim from land and that the crocodiles often missed 
‘their man. He was an excellent and careful nurse 
‘to the poor boat in his charge and he triumphed at 
last, bringing the invalid safely into Calcutta. 

Calcutta was like a steaming kettle, hissing with 
‘the voices of kites and frogs. An accurately levelled 
ceiling of white mist was suspended above the broad 
Maidan, slung between the white domed Memorial 
and the big business buildings. At the river's edge 
the cargo ships coughed and cursed and boasted, but 
for the moment, as I crossed the Maidan, I did not 
envy them. I was just home from my own little odd 
‘voyage and would not have exchanged it. 


114 THE LITTLE WORLD 


IV 


HE Pundit and his second wife came to tea. 
The upper part of the Pundit’s body was — 
“foreign style’ except for the very small neat turban 
that surmounted his large aggrieved brown face; his 
dark alpaca coat was a tribute to the truly British 
rite of five o’clock tea. But his legs were draped 
in loopings of spotless white cotton beside which 
the trousers of Imperial Britain looked constrained 
and bourgeois. 

The Pundit’s second wife was nearly thirteen years 
old. She held the hand of her stepdaughter—her 
senior—very nervously, but this consolation was in- 
termittent, for whenever anyone spoke to her or 
looked at her, both her hands must be disengaged 
and clasped before her thin little nodding nose in an 
attitude of prayer. The plea—Don’t hurt me— 
shone through that little polite gesture and was her 
only reproach to society or comment on her lot. 
She wore a rich wine-colored sari and, as she sat 
looking extremely small on the sofa beside her large 
English hostess, her little tinselled beaded feet trod 
nervously upon each other. She would not eat or 
drink; she only bobbed and prayed when dishes were 
offered to her. 

The Pundit, who was perhaps thirty years older 
than she was, sat opposite, looking critically at his 
second wife. It was his intention, he said, that she 


pee 


INDIA 115 


should be a woman of the world, not a pardah 


nashin. He wished her worldliness to be achieved 
within the year, for he intended to take her to 
England almost at once and expected her to be able 
to entertain his friends and take her proper and 


_assured place in the world. It was time, he said, 
that Indian women should help their husbands in 


the social obligations and duties that the Empire 


_ demanded of prominent men like himself. He in- 


} 


tended to engage a competent lady secretary, an 


_ Englishwoman, to instruct his wife in the necessary 


‘worldliness. We all looked at the Pundit’s wife and 
-her hands sprang together and her quivering chin 
jerked down on her breast as she caught the look. 
Our hostess rose and found in a drawer an Indian 
‘doll, looking rigidly and brazenly from beneath its 
| gaudy sari. 


The Pundit’s second wife forgot to pray before 


_taking the doll into her arms. ‘‘Ai ai,” she said, 
arranging its robe, ‘‘Ai ai, ai ai.” 


She would have thought her own enthusiasm very 


coarse and vulgar if she had stopped to realize it. 
Perhaps the Pundit thought that she was not quite 
living up to her own important position for he 
‘looked quickly away from her and said, “Dolls like 
_ these are often made by Indian families to accustom 
| their young daughters to the meaning of marriage. 
First a man doll is given, then a female doll and 


finally, one by one, young dolls, In this way inno- 


cence is instructed.” 


ai...’ she was saying in a most secret voice. 


AN taal ng? 


116 THE LITTLE WORLD 
His eecone wife was feeling the doll’s face with 
a finger like the tiny brown frond of a fern. “Ai 
| 


MW 
de 


THE STATES AGAIN 
I 


‘TN England, after three years, I tied the knot of 
‘the rather humble ravelled thread of my jour- 
neying round the world. 

I got married and spent six months of arduous 
leisure in a carefree re-visiting of that America I 
had once crossed with suspense and with much count- 
ing of pennies. 

Ignorance is the impetus that pushes all travelers 
from their starting points. We travel because we do 
not know. We know that we do not know the best 
before we start. That is why we start. But we 
forget that we do not know the worst either. That 
1s why we come back. From the furious tourist who 
discovers too late that the daily delivery of the 
Morning Post is scarcely ever achieved in foreign 
lands, to the square-jawed traditional hero who finds 
himself alone without ammunition face to face with 
an exasperated tigress, we all find that, in making 
ourselves the guests of strange lands, we reckon 
without our hosts. We are more likely to imagine 
our sensations on first seeing the Taj Mahal than 
to anticipate the inconvenience caused by the eating 

ELZ 


118 THE LITTLE WORLD 


of our trousseaux by white ants. It is, of course, a 
happy thing that we have optimistic imaginations to 
make fools—or, in other words, tourists—of us all. | 
At least it is a happy thing for hotel-keepers, hungry | 
tigresses, white ants and what not. But it is, I find, , 
a doubtful honor to be more of a fool than anyone 
else. 

Nobody but a true fool tries to cross the Unita 
States in a Ford car in the middle of winter. Fools 
in a minor degree do it fairly often in summer but | 
the fools who cross in winter are the princes of 
their kind. We are converted to this doctrine now; 
yet, with our folly and forty-six hundred miles 
safely 1 in our past, we are rather proud of bein 
princes of our kind. 

There are several highways across the North 
American continent and this fact alone fools tray-. 
elers. Highway is a word with an easy and com. 
fortable sound to the ears of all but those who have | 
already motored across the States. Actually the use 
of the word in this connection is an act of faith and, 
very beautiful. It means that some day Ford-. 
errants, or their successors, will be able to run sing-' 
ing without changing gears on a road like a taut. 
wire stretched from the sunrise to the sunset. Let, 
us not dwell on the disappointing fact that, by that. 
time, all the transcontinental fools will be inefh-. 
ciently using aeroplanes, and the only improvement: 
will be that they will fall into airpockets instead of | 
bog-holes and so end their folly and their difficulties 


| 


THE STATES AGAIN 119 


‘once and for all. At present, however, the highway 
‘is very inadequate as a way and can hardly be called 
high. The winter route must be the most southerly 
‘possible, and on the “Old Spanish Trail” the Conti- 
nental Divide is only six thousand feet high. Mostly 
‘the trail burrows in swamps like a mud-turtle, 
ploughs its way humbly through deep unstable sands, 
or explores the edges of dead inland seas and slow 
‘red rivers. 

_ These are the states through which we passed: 
ies, N: J., Pa., Del., Md., D. C., Va., N. C., 
S. C., Ga., Ala., Miss., La., Tex. N. M., Ariz., 
‘and Calif. I hope this is perfectly clear. 

' Humility is the first thing expected of a Ford 
owner. It is the last thing the Ford owner feels. 
‘We have never before owned anything that ran 
on wheels, but now that we own a Ford called 
Stephanie, Pierce Arrows and Rolls Royces are 
nothing to us. Believe it or not—on a good 
road we can pass every known make of car 
except a Ford, and nothing but a Ford ever dares 
to pass us. 

' Stephanie is the newest model; her voice is like 
that of the nightjar in midsummer; her profile is 
Grecian in its exquisite simplicity. She hails from 
Connecticut and bears her state nameplate under her 
chin and at the nape of her neck. Homesick natives 
of Connecticut State constantly come up to her and, 
patting her lovingly on her hot muzzle, say, ‘‘Say, 
sister, I’m from Connecticut too. What's your 


120 THE LITTLE WORLD 


hometown?” Then Stephanie regretfully and wit! 
an acquired British accent has to confess that she ha: 
naturalized as an alien. 

Although so young, Stephanie has seen a grea’ 
deal of life. She started from New York, and wher 
she started we scarcely knew one knob on her figuri 
from another, and the uses of almost all knobs wer! 
hidden from us. So we hired a man called Al t¢ 
drive us down to Philadelphia explaining the knob 
psychology of Stephanie as he drove. Unfortu 
nately Al proved to have an important engagemen 
which dragged him from us just as we approache 
the outlying suburbs of Philadelphia and threw hin 
into the New York train. We still had twenty mile 
to go. Stephanie sat smiling like a black devil wher 
her faithless driver had left her. Since I had spen 
a longer time in the front seat than S. I noy 
dubiously assumed the responsibility of driving. i 
Ford, we had been told, was fool-proof and I wa 
certainly a fool within the meaning of the act. © 
knocked a few knobs about—Stephanie moved . 
Proudly hopeful that we were so far in no way dit 
tinguishable from the hundred million (or so) othe 
Ford owners in the United States, we drove t 
Broad Street. We did not know the way to Radne 
—our destination—but Broad Street looked a pu! 
poseful—almost a fool-proof—street. Rain streake 
the windshield; all the outside world was a-dazzl 
and a-squirm seen through the glass. The darknes 
and the lights and the polished road were splu 


ae 


THE STATES AGAIN 121 


tered in our confused sight. But still we moved 
successfully. 
Something was wrong. I had committed a crime. 
Stephanie had committed a crime. Everyone in 
the world was shouting at us. Two policemen were 
running towards us gesturing insanely, each shout- 
ing something different out of one corner of his 
mouth. 
“Say, where was you raised?” 
“Say, can’t you see the sign?” 
“Say, when you gwineter wake up?” 
_ Stephanie had suddenly fainted and, as she did so, 
the position became dreadfully clear. In docile 
obedience to some nod, beck, or wreathed smile from 
a policeman, all the other automobiles going up and 
down Broad Street had stopped. Alone, Stephanie 
had proceeded innocently across an oasis of for- 
bidden ground and now had fainted upon a tram- 
Jine, so that trams from two directions were blocked. 
Everyone in the world would be late for dinner. 
‘Nothing would move again. The block by now 
‘would be miles long. Back, way back, in Baltimore, 
‘in Washington, in San Francisco, in Honolulu. . . 
(people would be held up, cursing Stephanie. The 
‘business of the United States would be at a stand- 
(all. There would be international complications— 
another Great War. : 

“Well say, what’s eating you? Step on her, can’t 
you?” 

‘What do I step on, for God’s sake ?”’ 


: 


122 THE LITTLE WORLD 


I stepped on everything. I tore everything from — 
its socket except the handbrake which I left gripping | 
Stephanie’s vitals. Yet Stephanie awoke to the fact | 
that she was fool-proof. She moved in a series of 
appalling spasms with a loud grinding noise. We 
were safe in a side-street before she fainted again. © 
Collecting our fluttering wits sufficiently to take off — 
the brake at last, we rolled for two hours about the 
wet trackless wastes of suburban Philadelphia, try- 
ing to find a way to Radnor without crossing cruel — 
Broad Street again. By a miracle we fell over 
Radnor in the dark. ... ) 

We know knobs better now. After that Stephanie 
took the matter into her own hands and we could — 
only sit in turns at her steering wheel and admire — 
her spirit. She loved to leap ahead at thirty or forty — 
miles an hour and once, passing a stout, road-filling — 
Cadillac, she skidded in soft gravel and bounded 
from the road into the virgin forests of Maryland. — 
Only a very solid object can stop a highly-strung — 
car like Stephanie when her gasoline is up. In this — 
case it was the trunk of a fallen tree, combined with — 
the frenzied entreaties of her driver, that reminded 
her of her duty. She sustained a cracked windshield — 
and a sprained headlight and had to put herself into 
the hands of a Ford surgeon. 

Great minds, it is said—and said far too often— ~ 
think alike, and Stephanie found herself continually 
arriving in the same cities as Marshal Foch, who 
was at that time touring the States, receiving the — 


THE STATES AGAIN 123 


freedom of cities he probably intended never to visit 
again, and accepting swords of honor which it is 
hoped the League of Nations will never allow him 
-touse. He had everything America could give him 
-—except a Ford. We saw him often, making shift 
with a Pierce Arrow, whistling up excited main- 
‘streets, pressed in with a full measure of compressed 


military minions. I admit we never managed 
to pass him—but then in the South no one ever 


passes anyone. Everyone is stuck in a bog all the 


time. 
Upon the roads of North and South Carolina and 


_of Georgia it is at least an esthetic pleasure to get 


bogged. The roads are the only vivid things in the 
South. The color of gumbo is a dazzling rust, 


sometimes a bright vermilion. Gumbo is of a glue- 


like consistency, most useful in its proper place—no 


doubt it would mend china or weld iron or add body 


to chewing-gum; as the foundation of a highway, 


however, it would disconcert a stronger character 
‘than Stephanie. There are always two ruts on a 


gumbo road. They are two feet deep or more, yet 
a hardy Ford can flounder along them at a spanking 
three miles an hour, until it meets another Ford 
floundering along in the opposite direction on the 


same pair of ruts. Everyone then alights from both 
Fords and sinks irritably into knee-high gumbo. 
_The drivers argue for a while and then he of the 
_ Strongest character blithely helps the more pliable 


party to heave the latter’s Ford into the bottomless 


124 THE LITTLE WORLD 


outer gumbo. Then there is weeping and gnashing 
of teeth until a cynical passing mule consents—for 
a consideration—to haul the unfortunate out. 
There is none of that romantic brotherhood-of-the- 
road stuff in the Carolinas. 

There are tears in the air of that country in the 
winter, in spite of the persistent laughter of the 
negroes. The thin woods brood like rainclouds; the 
cottonfields are desolate and dripping, and untidy 
tufts of dirty white cotton still cling to the plants. 
Cotton was an unappreciated crop that year and on 
all the waste places of the plantations were great 
bales of unsold cotton rotting in the rain. One saw 
cardinal birds sometimes—beads of flying fire—but 
they seemed to have no song. The only cheerful 
voices were those of the negroes; whole villages of 
negroes, it seemed, had nothing to do but laugh in 
cracked foolish voices. ‘They laughed when they 
fell off their mules or when they went to church or 
when their buggies had to capsize in the ditches to 
make room for Stephanie or when they sold us new- 
laid eggs or asked us to what church we were affili- 
ated or gave us wrong directions with expansive 
gestures. 

Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are swamp 
states and all their trees are bearded with Spanish 
moss. ‘Trees so festooned are, I suppose, to South- 
erners, as genial and domestic as ivied oaks are to us. 
But I think that this grisly gray lichen is one of the 
most mean and furtive-looking inventions of nature. 


( 
ie 
es 


mn ih MW 


SPANISH MOSS 


i — ae by, 
=: ate 
ON akan eae E 
a f 
~~ 


THE STATES AGAIN 127 


My heart sinks now when I remember it; it seems 
to me the banner of a weeping land. ‘That is the 
South that stays in my mind; New Orleans did not 
dispel the impression, nor brisk Atlanta nor scho- 
lastic Athens high on a sunny hill. Even the memory 
of a two days’ wait for the Mobile ferry at Daphne, 
a sunny windy village with a generous and radiantly 
humble little inn under great live-oak trees, a place 
with a silver beach sloping to the jade-gray Gulf of 
Mexico at its feet—remains an isolated memory. 

New Orleans, as we saw it, could be simply de- 

scribed as a wet place surrounded by water. 

Stephanie almost became an amphibian after she 

‘set wheel in Mississippi and Louisiana. She did 
not like it—and Stephanie is one of those who never 
suffer in silence. She had a hysterical trick of stop- 
ping dead with a horrifying coughing noise on the 
gangplanks of ferries at an angle of forty-five 
degrees. This she did in order to make her drivers 
appear fools in the eyes of ferrymen. We became 
familiar with the meaning silences of ferrymen as 
Stephanie settled down—a sheer derelict—upon 
‘their gangplanks. After an awkward silence the 
ferryman usually said, ‘‘Say, yu hevn’t bin driving 
a Ford very long, I lay, hev yu?” 

We then blushed deeply and said, “I guess there 
must be something wrong with a sparkplug or what 
ie... 

The ferryman would then change his gum into 


128 THE LITTLE WORLD 


the other cheek and get into the driver’s seat of 


Stephanie, who at once, with a guttural roar of 
malicious amusement, slid faultlessly into her 


allotted place. 


Sometimes the ferries on the way to New Orleans © 


are quite sophisticated and have crews consisting of 


as many as two men and have funnels with real 
smoke coming out of them. Sometimes they are as 
primitive as Ed’s ferry. Ed’s ferry was a wooden 
‘flat’ towed by a limping gasoline launch along the 
channels of a desolate and malarial swamp in ~ 
Louisiana. The launch contained Ed, and, on the > 
flat, Stephanie and we were enthroned. Ed was a 
colored gentleman who wore a bowler hat and a 


shiny serge ‘‘gents’ city suiting,’ now worn from 


blue to mauve. He earned, on his own admission, — 


about twenty dollars a day but was nevertheless — 
aggrieved, apparently because he was obliged to get 


out of bed to ply his indolent trade. Fourteen miles. 


\ 
! 


we trailed limply after Ed along an airless stream © 
lined with swamp grass fifteen or twenty feet high. © 
All the big trees in that dubious land were dead— 
killed, it seemed, by the spectral gray moss which © 
hung in long wreaths and loops from the gray 


brittle branches. ‘The trees had roots like snakes, 


writhing unhealthily in the black bog. The smaller — 
trees had but a few more hopeful but fading leaves. — 
There was nothing green in those sodden forests — 
except the traylike leaves of lilies on the water and — 


sometimes little low palms like hands among the tail 


| 


THE STATES AGAIN 129 


-rushes—like hands outstretched for the departed 
light of the sun. We saw nothing alive for two 
hours and a half except some cranes and a hunter 
with a dead racoon on his back. 

When we parted from Ed he gave us a pass for 
another ferry. He said he “didn’t care to write,” 
so we wrote our own pass and, at Ed’s dictation, 
forged his name. 

_ Another colored gentleman drove us about New 
Orleans, up and down the old French quarter that 
must once have been so gay and is now so papery 
-and squalid. The plaster is peeling from the friv- 
olous old walls now, the trees are overgrown, the 
_turned-back jalousies have lost their hinges and their 
_trimness and their green French insolence. Jackson 
| Square, where the first—but insufficiently advertised 
_—Declaration of Independence in the United States 
took place in 1768, when the French returned, 
_ without thanks, a Spanish Governor to Spain, still 
retains a certain faded stateliness, but its arcades, 
filled with dead rusted cannon, are boarded and 
_ railed up now. 
_ Although of course the ubiquitous Maréchal Foch 
was still dogging the steps of Stephanie, and the city 
Was gay with flags in spite of the rain, New Orleans 
seemed a drooping old widow of a city. Its glory 
seemed a glory of yesterday and was as meaningless 
_ today as rouge on an old cheek. 

There were millionaires and movie palaces and 

skyscrapers and oyster bars and bootleggers and 


130 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Creole dancing dives; there was “uplift,” as a result | 
of which no fewer than five “probes” could be 
counted on the front page of one newspaper—every | 
scandal reported with helpful completeness. There 
was a city park with improved Greek architecture 
init. And the old Spanish fort, a crumbling mound | 
of yellow-red brick, crowned with tipsy-looking old. 
cannon, was now the centre of a “Fun City” with a | 
switchback and popcorn booths and a Great Wheel. 
and nothing lacking that could possibly help to keep” 
an old Spanish fort in countenance. These things 

were like a gaudy veil upon a fine dead face. 

When the elect of the city die in these days, they 
go to the bristling cemetery of which an acre or two 
is, one gathers, doubly consecrated for the use of 
millionaires. The tombs of the millionaires, our 
guide assured us, cost anything up to a quarter of a 
million dollars. He pointed out that they were real 
elegant and that some of them were lighted up by 
electricity every night to match the movie halls and 
the all-night dives outside—so that, even in the dark, 
God might not overlook the fact that there were 
millionaires waiting there to: whom expense was no 
object. 

Every traveler moves in a world of prophecies, 
and we were told by nearly everyone we met that 
we should never get out of Louisiana into Texas. 
There were stretches of road that were vouched for 
as impassable and their names will always bring 
back to me the feeling of desperate and black de- 


THE STATES AGAIN 131 


fignce with which we approached them. A great 
‘many of the country people in Louisiana are French 
‘and those we met had very small hearts and very 
‘hungry purses. The roads were said to be deliber- 
‘ately kept impassable by the French farmers near 
them. The farmers stood with their mules all day 
near bog-holes that could have been filled in with a 
‘couple of cartloads of stones and a little good will. 
‘Like vultures the farmers flocked to devour the dere- 
lict cars in the holes. They haggled for their price 
—five dollars a pull—before they would hook their 
chains. Hats off to thrift. 

But in the end we crossed over into kind sandy 
‘Texas and left prophets and profiteers behind us for 
a while. 

' The desert met us quite suddenly beyond San An- 
tonio. Suddenly there were no more sugar planta- 
tions, there was no more tobacco; suddenly the trees 
disappeared and horizons sprang out of the stran- 
gling swamp—strange mountains with flat summits 
liks martello towers. The prickly pears were of all 
shades of red and green. The hills were of pale 
rock covered with a low leafless scrub. Our Ford’s 
wheels were set sometimes on white boulder-ledges, 
sometimes in the waters of little clear gay rivers 
which impudently crossed our path and were inno- 
cent of bridges; mostly we ran uneasily on sand. 
There were bump-gates across the trail to keep one 
tancher’s steers from another's. A bump-gate is 
opened by the car itself—with some damage to the 


132 THE LITTLE WORLD 


mudguards. You have simply to collide with one | 
wing of the gate with exactly the right amount of 
force. If you bump too hard the other wing of the _ 
gate spins round and damages your back mudguard; - 
if you bump too tenderly nothing happens, the gate | 
remains shut. The secret is a simple one when once — 
learned and I consider it curious that no steer on 
record has ever been able to defeat the ends of man | 
by mastering it. 

After a thousand miles of traveling over acsollt 
partly through deep soft sand, partly over naked ~ 
rock, partly through shallow arroyos, always along 
a trail defined only by more or less meagre ruts and 
by stumps and stones blazed with the colors of oy 
trail, Stephanie developed nervous breakdowns. 
Ford of her aristocratic temperament might wall 
suffer from such experiences. There were times 
when she had no cozy gasoline-smelling garage to 
sleep in at night, when all night long she had to 
stand, the centre of a very amateur camp, and listen’ 
for the scream of the coyotes and watch the shoot- 
ing stars leap from one horizon to the other; there 
were times when even the horizon might be known 
by heart without looking, and when destinatifal 
never seemed to come nearer, even after days of 
travel. In parts of Texas only one design in Tan 
tains is turned out; the slopes of these standardized 
eminences are all at one angle and the summits are 
as flat as though cut out in paper with one stroke 
of the scissors. Both mountain and desert are cov- 


THE STATES AGAIN 133. 


ered with one neutral color and there are no sur- 
| prises—except the cowboys. 

' When I was about ten I was so unmaidenly as 
to announce publicly my intention of marrying a 
‘cowboy. Years have brought me reticence and the 
‘sad discovery that all ideals are very shy game— 
yet years have not changed my enthusiasm for the 
‘heroic genus about which the arts of Messrs. Bret 
and William S. Hart(e) are built. The cowboys 
are the real flowers of the desert. Those of the 
‘ordinary public who have seen the movies may 
‘clothe the cowboys of their secret romances forever 
‘in the bright colors that used to constitute their gala 
‘wear. At a rodeo in California six years ago the _ 
cowboys proved themselves capable of wearing with- 
‘out a trace of bashfulness scarlet shirts, orange 
‘neckerchieves, yellow sombreros and crimson wool 
chaps. Cowboys on the everyday desert, however, 
favor protective coloring—unless they are Mexican. 
‘In any of the rather dust-colored little towns of 
southwest Texas—towns that are flung upon the 
desert without apparent reason, blown, one would 
“say, to their locations by the indifferent desert wind 
‘that blows nobody either good or ill—the cowboys 
‘swagger up and down in modest leather or sheep- 
skin waistcoats and flapping leather chaps; their 
only touch of fantasy is shown in their high boots, 
‘stitched in floral designs, and in their tall broad 
‘desert-colored hats. Gorgeous colors are out of 
fashion, even on holidays. At a rodeo in El Paso 


134 THE LITTLE WORLD 


all the splendor was concentrated on gold- and 
silver-studded saddles, cuff-bands, and belts. 

The end of a rodeo always leaves me vowing 
that the thing is as cruel as bullfighting and that I 
will never witness such a conflict again. The begin. 
ning of the next rodeo, however, finds me seated 
eagerly on the nearest available bench, busy per- 
suading myself that calves love being roped from a_ 
distance and tied in knots, that bulls enjoy the feeling 
of having their necks twisted by bulldozers until their — 
legs fail them, and that it does young men good to 
fall crashing from the upper air into which they have 
been shot from the humped backs of frantic bronchos. © 

Cowboys are a sort of madness with me because J 
they seem to belong so slightly to today. A cow- 
boy’s swagger is as much part of his equipment as 
it was that of the soldier of fortune of yesterday. 
There is nothing damping to me about the fact that: | 
their swagger is largely self-conscious and deliberate. | 4 
All that is in keeping with their old splendid swash- | 
buckling role. The fact that in these days they occa- | 
sionally arrive—in their characteristic cloud of dust i 
—not on a broncho pulled up from a full gallop at 
the door, but in a Ford car, is only slightly disap- 
pointing. A Ford, a cowboy’s Ford, can jingle, can 
prance, can be jerked, foaming, to its haunches. | 
Ford or broncho, the cowboy glitters still in a halo 7 
of spurs and boastings and sixshooters. i 

We heard a cowboy at Sonora remarking—in | 
order to be overheard—that he drawed the line at © 


THE STATES AGAIN 135 


nothing but horse-stealing. His neighbor obviously 
thought that this would make an almost Sunday- 
school impression on the public so he hastened to 
add that he himself was not above riding a horse 
he ‘‘didn’t know the owner of.” ‘They watched our 
faces. All their talk was swagger and they were 
quite certain of our credulity and admiration and of 
that of the young lady chewing gum behind the 
counter of the “caife.” 

_ Young women in the West simper to match the 
‘men’s swagger. Sombreroed beauties who ride 
-gloriously from one adventure to another have never 
been seen by me in the Western States—indeed | 
know no Western girls who can sit a horse at all. 
As far as I have seen the young generation of West- 
ern charmers, they seem to be exclusively indoor. 
Pioneering was mother’s job. With rouge, rolled 
silk stockings, near-silk jumpers, hobble-skirts and 
silly pretty little city toques, they outrage the enor- 
mous desert skies; on high French heels they totter 
along remote boardwalks; with servile squeakings 
and chaste gigglings and nudgings they ensnare the 
simple cowboy hearts that we have believed that only: 
the free, the untamed, the primeval, the trick-eques- 
trienne female—(like us in our movie mood)— 
could ever charm or deserve. Shall mincing subur- 
ban morals, small-town graces, city smirks and wiles, 
seduce our interesting rogues? 

_ It is most disheartening for those of us who try 
so hard to be good yet attractive to see how easy it 


136 THE LITTLE WORLD 


is for rogues to make good their effect. We good 
mild persons who powder our noses and pin our 
hopes to marriage with a God-fearing breadwinner 
—we are inheriting and devastating the earth. We 
have invented Disarmament and Prohibition and the 
Girl Guide Movement and Higher Thought—and 
still one splendid lie, one fantastic coxcomb, can 
make us all look fools. 

At the joining of three exotic lands—Texas, New 
Mexico and Mexico proper—here perhaps will be 
the last stronghold of swagger and sombreros. 
Surely for a long time yet Mexico will be naughty, 
will be uninfected by the spirit of the movies and 
of ice-cream sodas and of Harold Bell Wright. 
Juarez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, 
opposite El Paso, has, it is refreshing to «learn, 
ninety-seven saloons and one soda-fountain. 

Stephanie went into Mexico. Indeed she broke 
down in the soft sand of a Mexican street. There 
is more provision for the reviving of men than of 
motor-cars in Juarez, and Stephanie, having fainted 
for lack of gasoline, had difficulty in finding a garage 
to supply her. Her drivers, on the other hand, had 
difficulty in walking a step in any direction without 
being offered stimulants. 

Mexicans may be backward in many ways; their 
adobe houses give no hint of progress or hygiene, 
the children in the streets are hardly cleaner or less 
forlorn than the pariah dogs, soldiers slouch along — 
as furtively as thieves, the solitary visible policeman 


SAJUARO 


THE STATES AGAIN 139 


of Juarez droops, limply yawning, against a hitching 
post all day with his uniform undone. But in tak- 
ing advantage of the opportunity presented by the 
proximity of an enormous thirsty neighbor like the 
United States, Mexicans have not been at all slow. 
Nobody seems to think of the border of Mexico now 
as a lawless region which wise men avoid; on the 
contrary, the very mention of it makes the average 
mouth water. I should not be surprised to hear 
that quite a considerable percentage of the hundred 
million inhabitants of the United States is making 
discreet inquiries of real estate offices in search of 
properties as near as possible to a land so richly 
flowing with milk and honey—to put it rather 
euphemistically. 

It is possible that this trend of “hundred per cent 
Americans” towards the Mexican border may have 
a civilizing missionary effect on Mexico. But it is 
not very probable, if one may judge from two days 
‘spent between saloon and saloon among American 
civilizers in Mexico. 

The desert shewed itself more and more austerely 
to us every day. Sometimes the deep soft sand en- 
trapped us and we had to work really hard to escape. 
The desert was never flat, never so simple as it 
looked, never bare. Fantastic mountains surrounded 
us always and cactuses became more riotous and 
more incredible as we crossed New Mexico towards 
‘Arizona. In Arizona occurs the culmination of the 
‘erescendo of cactuses. Sajuaros are everywhere; 


140 THE LITTLE WORLD 


they point at the sky in such numbers that broad 
hillsides seem like steepled cities. The sajuaro must 
be a standing joke among the more conventional 
kindly fruits of the earth. The fact that it stands 
more or less describes it—an upright green corru- 
gated hirsute thing with a waist-measurement of 
perhaps fifty inches. It is waist all the way down. 
It looks like someone who has lost his hat. It stands 
anywhere between twenty and thirty feet high. 
Sometimes the more imaginative sajuaros produce 
one or two absurd little crooked fingers, corrugated 
and hairy like the main stem, pointing idiotically 
this way and that. I have often felt that by stand- 
ing up to a sajuaro and insulting it and then stabbing 
it through and through its fat green ribs till the tip 
of one’s quivering blade came out the other side, 
one would have all the thrills of being a murderer 
without its disadvantages. There is a fatter and 
even sillier cactus that sits at the feet of the 
sajuaro. It resembles those round cushions on which 
some people sit by the fire in drawing rooms. It 
cannot, however, be used for the same purpose, since 
it is very prickly. ‘There is a brown cactus like a 
splash of rigid snakes, and there is another which 
pathetically tries to beautify itself by wearing a few 
thick stalkless yellow flowers on its angular and 
whiskered knuckles. But the sajuaros command the 
scene and, when [ think of them, I am again waking 
up at dawn, lying on the sand, facing a crack of 
rising sun behind the square-topped mountains, and 


THE STATES AGAIN 14! 


the long simple shadows of the sajuaros lie across 
the lilac-gray slopes. 

One night, on a switchback mountain track, fif- 
teen miles short of the next town, gasoline ran short. 
There was some gasoline, to be sure, in Stephanie’s 
tank, enough to carry us for miles over a flat road. . 
But gasoline, even in a fool-proof Ford, must sub- 
mit to the laws of natural science, and, when a tank 
is tilted insanely backwards up grades that only an 
aeroplane could calmly tackle, gasoline simply will 
not flow forward. We stuck in a dry river bed. 
With a take-off from soft sand, Stephanie could not 
be induced to surmount the high very steep bouldery 
bank on the further side. We had been warned 
_ never to camp in dry river beds. A shower in some 
distant high valley might make such a camp a death 
_trap. But Stephanie vowed she would camp no- 
where else that night, unless gasoline was supplied. 
I had an idea.’ I know now from whom that idea 
came but at the time I wafted thanks for it in the 
wrong direction. I had noticed that gasoline always 
floats on the surface of water. I thought, “If we fill 
_our tank half full of water, the gasoline will be 
_ lifted up to the level of the pipe and so we shall be 
saved.” Perhaps I shall not be believed when I say 
that to a certain point this idea worked. Stephanie, 
with her spirit thus uplifted by water from a pool of 
the river, reached the top of the bank. And there 
_ she died. 

Among the cactuses on a tiny plateau a tinker had 


142 THE LITTLE WORLD 


made his camp. He had two donkeys and two 
little idiot sons. It was what is called a family of 
“white trash” traveling from Kentucky to the State 
of Washington. But trash though the tinker might 
be, he was not unfriendly to us—offered us the use 
of his fire—(firewood in cactus country is hard to 
find)—offered us bacon, mumbled mildly to us. — 
Screened from the light of his fire by steeples of © 
sajuaro, we unrolled our blankets, and only woke 
next morning to see the tinker rattling away with 
his donkeys and his kettles and his little cackling 
boys. We asked him to get help for us when he 
should reach town, but the vacant look on his face 
did not encourage us to hope. So S. presently set 
out on a fifteen mile walk, and Stephanie and I sat 
hoping we might see a bear—at a reasonable dis- 
tance. Nothing, however, happened for some hours 
and then a car, carrying S. and some strangers 
from Montana, arrived. 

“Why look who’s here!”’ said the chief gentleman 
from Montana, speaking out of Stephanie’s diges- 
tive organs. “You got water in yer tank.” 

We said no word. 

“Tt’s these gararges—they’re all as slick’n crooked 
as they can be these days. If a guy looks a bit 
green these gararges’ll hold him up for his bottom 
Cent x) i! y ee 

We said no word. 

The kind man from Montana let the water out of 
Stephanie’s tank and gave us enough gasoline to 


a ee 


THE STATES AGAIN 143 


take us to the next town. He left us still green but 
grateful. Even more green and more grateful than 
we gave him to suppose. 

The town of Benson—(grand old name)—came 
next to the town of Tombstone—and all on the way 
to Death Valley. This ill-conceived sequence 
seemed to us like a disturbing hint from a better 
_world—almost as alarming as angels calling. We 
_ decided to pass through Benson and Tombstone with 
faces averted; we swore that we would not even buy 
_a pint of gasoline or a sardine in either and that we 
_would shun Death Valley. For ten days I had been 
-a wreck owing to some accident in the middle ear, 
caused by constant jolting, which left me so violently 
giddy that I could at no time stand without support 
and sometimes could not even sit upright. At a 
hotel in El Paso we had been refused a room, prob- 
_ably because I gave the impression that I had 
already called at all the ninety-seven saloons of 
_ Juarez. Deming, New Mexico, in spite of the 
_ ninety-nine per cent purity which inspires its boosting 
slogan, found me reeling and rolling still. As for 
the really beautiful steep rusty city of Bisbee, Ari- 
- zona, its high vivid mountains whirl and swing upon 
my memory like great waves of the sea. I was con- 
vinced that if we stopped at Benson, near Tomb- 
stone, I should die. To have one’s name coupled 
with a tombstone was the same as to have one foot 
in the grave. We tore through Tombstone; we 
burst through Benson. Tombstone tried to lasso 


144 . THE LITTLE WORLD 


us in the noose of a strange strong icy wind. We 
turned up our collars and drove on. Benson tried. 
to hold us in a bog. We overcame the bog. Both 
tried to threaten us by means of a most ominous low 
red smokey sky. We refused to be impressed. And 
then—this in the southernmost desert seemed the 
ultimate surprise, the most refined form of treachery 
—snowflakes were seen to fall and vanish on 
Stephanie’s hot nose and the next minute a blizzard 
had wrapped us up. Our purpose was snatched out 
of our hands and whirled away on the giddy white 
choking wind. We tried faithfully to drive on. We. 
did drive on until we were two Lot’s wives. And 
then we had to give up. In fact we had to make such) 
an effort to get back to Benson that Benson for a. 
while became a hope instead of a fear. ‘That, it 
seemed to me, was the wiliness of unescapable fate. 
We spent the night in Benson in a house of gloomy 
smells. I brooded on death—ah, it was cruel, I 
seemed so young to die . . . I remembered various 
flaws in my will. My life, I now saw, had been full. 
of errors and imperfections. I slept feverishly, 
listening for the rustle of wings. I awoke absolutely. 
cured of all ills. We paid the overcharges of the 
landlady like a happy ransom. I could hardly eat. 
my fried egg for singing—and it was a bad one. 
Stephanie almost lost heart on the border of Ari- 
zona and California. There was no limit to the. 
demands that were put upon her, and the imprint of 
her terrible experiences will never be erased from) 


| 
| 


4 


| 
| 
} 


THE STATES AGAIN 145 


her countenance. She reached California a prema- 
turely aged Ford; rheumatism and asthma were 
among the least of her complaints; at one time she 
actually became delirious, her horn began to blow 
by itself and continued to make itself heard in sense- 
less ravings for a distance of about twenty miles. 
‘This sad condition, so unlike that of the sparkling 
‘and frolicsome young Ford who left Connecticut 
‘two months before, almost brought tears to the eyes 
‘of her drivers. But nobody could wonder at it. In 
the space of the last ten days of the journey, 
‘Stephanie was wrapped in snow, drowned in floods, 
parched on a ninety-five mile stretch of desert so 
‘bare and comfortless that, according to one in- 
‘formant, even the “‘jackrabbits carried their lunches 
‘with them,”’ and, in the end, cooled and diamonded 
‘with spray from a pearly sunset sea. 

| Crossing from Arizona we almost lost hope. At 
‘one moment, if an obliging aeroplane had offered 
us a lift, we would have abandoned Stephanie and 
‘accepted. The Colorado River had flooded miles 
‘of roads about eighteen inches deep in water. The 
water devilishly concealed the lapses in the road 
and.one day we only traveled eighteen miles— 
working hard from sunrise to sunset, wallowing out 
of one muddy crisis into another. At every mud- 
hole we had to wade back and forth to the nearest 
point of dry land with our kit in order to lighten the 
car, we had to chop sticks and, bending double, 
elbow deep in opaque water, thrust them under 


146 - THE LITTLE WORLD 


Stephanie’s spinning splashing wheels. We had lost 
our tire-chains in a bottomless mudhole. Also we 
had another loss. Money in an inner coat pocket is 
safe enough in circumstances that permit a man to 
stand dry and upright as his Maker intended him to 
stand. But tip that man in and out of a Ford 
foundering in floods, load him with wet kit-bags, 
bend him like a hairpin, bereave him of hope and: 
dignity—and where is that money at the end of the 
day? Where indeed is it? We had nothing now 
but a few dollars which I found, sodden, in my 
breeches pocket. Would a pigskin case of green- 
backs and Cook’s checks float? I waded back a 
mile, barefoot on the soft slimy mud beneath the 
water, to see if money could float. But money is 
specially designed to be elusive. It either rolls or 
sinks. S., disabled by short sight from joining in 
the watery search, stripped Stephanie to the last. 
tin of corned beef, building a castle of kit-bags, 
coats, cameras, cans and pans on an island in the 
flood. The money was nowhere; there is nothing so. 
thoroughly lost as lost money. Poor S., waiting 
gloomily for my return, sitting in the re-loaded car, 
had to bear further injury. A Ford-full of cowboys 
ploughing through the water, having passed me 
kneedeep in flood and despair ‘“‘way back,” stopped 
to tell S. what chivalrous America thinks of mon- 
ocled Englishmen who sit in dry ease in opulent 
Fords while their wives wade barefoot behind. Poor 
S.’s protests were not understood except as a further 


THE STATES AGAIN 147 


aggravation. The English tongue as we understand 
it is not spoken in the enlightened West. 

_ Ah, chivalrous America . . . Arriving that eve- 
ning at a small cheerless hamlet, cold, soaked and 
‘exhausted, we stayed in a room full of holes through 
which the draughts whistled. ‘The place was cold as 
—chivalry. We were soaked, shivering, and sad. 
One hole in the floor shewed us the store beneath 
and to the store we went to sit on the counter by 
the stove and seek sympathy. We told our host 
and the assembled cowboys of the loss of our money 
and a kind of auction followed, the chivalrous cow- 
boys and storekeeper haggling for the highest pos- 
sible proportion of the lost money to be paid to the 
finder. When this generous rivalry had reached its 
most expensive point, two or three sympathizers 
went off to look for the money. Whether they 
found it or not, only they can tell. We never saw 
it again. 

' The remaining cowboys sat in a row on the 
counter, eating bananas. and—with a chilling effect 
of bathos—discussing the various makes and prices 
of cowboy clothes. I asked them if I might sketch 
them. They were as much pleased as flappers, and 
they meticulously called my attention to the par- 
ticular glories of their outfits. “They were so anxious 
to watch the progress of the drawing, and at the 
same time to maintain their noble poses, that they 
almost broke themselves in two. Each man thought 
the drawing of his neighbor ‘“‘dandy”’ but each was 


148 THE LITTLE WORLD 


ashamed of the portrait of himself. One man was 
much offended to find that his mustache was not 
perceptibly included in the group. 

Next morning as we started through the floods 
again a cowboy rode splashing after us to ask if he 
might have the sketch of himself for his mother, 
But it was deep in a kit-bag; we were English and 
unchivalrous and we had had eneugh of submarine 
unpacking. 

Although we had now almost no money we had 
the first gesture of a stroke of luck. We found a 
beautiful new tire—no Ford’s property but the lost| 
darling of a Pierce Arrow. It filled nearly the. 
whole of Stephanie’s seating space. Perhaps a large | 
reward would be offered—enough to take us to San 
Francisco. Perhaps the millionaire owner would | 
never think of it again and we—after a decent inter- 
val of uncertainty—would turn our treasure into 
gold. At any rate there was a kind of perfume of | 
relief about that tire. We drove proudly up to the | 
next garage. 

‘‘Anybody missed a tire?” : 

T Naty) a one, sister. It’s a dandy one, too. 
Worth money.’ 

‘Tf nobody claims it or reports it, d’you thinks we 
could sell it? Weve lost nearly all our money.” 

‘Sure you could sell it . . .” 

But we couldn’t, for next morning it was gone. 
The garage mechanic said he had given it away toa 
man. “I guess he was the owner all right.” We. 


THE STATES AGAIN 149 


guessed he wasn’t. There was a terrible scene. We 


had built hopes on that tire. The shock of the fall 


_of our hopes made us tremble with rage. The ga- 
‘rage man said, “See here, stranger, let me tell you, 


you gotta lot to learn about America . . . us big- 


hearted Westerners, we don’t want no money for 


' doing a neighbor a good turn...” But this ro- 
coco pedestal was easily demolished. ‘There was 


nothing for us to do except frighten the man and 
_ make him look a fool, and this we did with a whole 
‘heart. He had stolen our treasure and our last 
“hope. In a moment he offered us money to say no 
more. He was really frightened when we refused 
and left him, the word sheriff on our lips. But we 
had no time to seek justice. We must hurry to Los 
' Angeles, racing with our shrinking resources. 


There can be few experiences that equal the 


_ journey across the desert from Blythe, on the Colo- 
_rado River, to Mecca, on the Salton Sea, and thence 
across the San Gorgonio Pass into a plain brimming 
_with orange groves, bristling with palms and the 
_ languid spires of eucalyptus. 


From the desert one descends into the red mouth 
of a canyon which winds darkly and grotesquely 


through mountains. At every turn of the trail— 


which is nothing more than the sandy bed of an 


_ old dead river—one thinks that one has fallen into 
_atrap of the gods. There is, it seems, no way out— 
_ yet suddenly a narrower passage still, at a sharp 
_ angle, catches the seeker’s eye and leads him on. 


150 THE LITTLE WORLD 


And so one gropes incredulously until one comes out 
abruptly into sunlight and into sight of a great view 
of the dead salt sea, two hundred feet below sea- 
level—a leaden-bound lake in ashen banks of alkali. 
And behind it the tall snow mountains leap into the 
sky. | 
Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no 
eccentricities and no heart. It is approached. 
through oil fields that tower in skeleton groups like. 
thin enormous dead forests. There could be no 
charming adventures in Los Angeles, I think, even in. 
that crimped silly suburb Hollywood where they. 
turn out adventures readymade for the consumption 
of those who have none of their own. Yet there was 
treasure for us in Los Angeles—treasure of a kind. 
We sold the fag-end of our insurance back to its. 
issuing company for some useful hard dollars. And 
so—San Francisco at last, that kind odd northern 
California that smiles among mists and flowers and 
honest winds between the hills and the sea. | 

Of those forty-six hundred miles now there is— 
nothing, it seems, left to us. The miles are packed 
in concentrated tabloid form in the speedometer of 
Stephanie and in a couple of diaries which we shall | 
perhaps never look at again. The print of our 
tires, the charred ghosts of our campfires, are buried | 
deep in sand and lost now. The things we do run_ 
out like water or sand between our fingers. Truly. 
travelers are fools to open their arms so wide and 
to possess so little in the end. 


THE STATES AGAIN 151 


II 


| HESE are some of the little midges of seeing 

and hearing that are caught in the spider-web 
‘of my memory at the end of that struggle across a 
continent. 

Henderson, North Carolina—‘Health Hustle 
‘Henderson”—reached on Thanksgiving Day. I re- 
‘member noticing at dinner how full of secret under- 
‘standing the restaurant was, what an undercurrent 
‘of meaning flowed beneath each order, how effective 
were desires that never found expression, and what 
‘suggestive-looking liquid substances were brought by 
waiters in opaque glasses and cups in obedience to 
‘cries for innocent things like milk, coffee, lemonade 
‘with a dash of maple syrup . . . As strangers we 
‘knew no passwords and as aliens we had no excuse 
‘to Give Thanks. Late that night on our landing 
‘we fell over the powerless form of one whose thanks 
had been given in full measure, a hundred per cent 
American for whom the claims of God and the Pil- 
‘grim Fathers very logically took precedence of the 
‘decrees of Mr. Volstead. 

I remember the first time we camped, near 
Grover, South Carolina. A soft rain fell on us 
through the branches of a little wood and the light 
of Stephanie’s headlights cut dramatically out of 
the blackness of the wood branches and twigs and 
leaves hung with beads of rain. The frogs roared 
in the rain, and on the distant road we could hear 


152 THE LITTLE WORLD 


the voices of ordinary domestic people going home. 
We felt like a very important secret in our iron 
strongbox of rain and the shouting of frogs—our 
safe, clamped with the jointed steel bars of trees. 

I remember King’s Mountain City’s welcoming 
sign. ‘‘Go slow and see our city, go fast and see our, 
jail.” And the sign in a grocer’s store in Georgia, 
iELE you spit at home, spit here, make yourself at 
home.” 

I remember that in Montgomery, as we toppil 
a young man threw his arm affectionately round! 
S.’s shoulders. ‘“‘Say listen, you need a raincoat,” 
he said. I thought him an unusually kind and 
confident weather-prophet, perhaps a professional 
Greeter employed by the city council of Mont-. 
gomery to welcome strangers and warn them of the 
vagaries of the local weather. But S. was more 
suspicious; he drew himself up haughtily; this, he 
suspected, was some idiom new to him and had 
almost certainly an insolent inner meaning. 
‘““What’s the joke?” said S. coldly. ‘‘Joke—not on 
your life. I say you need a raincoat—’s’plain 
American. I k’n let you have the best raincoat on 
the market—the Nevermind Mae | 
dollars’n worth four times as much . . .”’ | 

I remember the daughter of the ra landlady at 
Richmond, Texas. The daughter was a heartless 
but faultless pianist, an interpreter of Chopin and 
Mendelssohn after a style which those compen 
could scarcely have foreseen. For she played them 


THE STATES AGAIN 153 


with perfect fluency—but always jazzed. She could 
/ not conceive of an unsyncopated rhythm. We were 
_happy in Richmond, Texas. There the badlands, at 

last, were no longer swamp and damp sugar-cane— 
_they were red prairies, like a sunset pressed and 
‘dried in a big book. 

I remember camping on Christmas Eve near 
iSonora, Texas, and ranging along a stream-bank 
in search of firewood, disturbing a row of little 
‘turtles so that with one impulse they dived from 
their log, pricking an accurate neat line of perfora- 
tions in the water. 

We had our Christmas luncheon in the shade of a 

great prickly pear with crimson and golden discs. 
‘And as we cooked our Christmas bacon on sticks in 
ithe flame, a big furry animal with black horizontal 
‘stripes from gray shoulder to ringed tail, crossed a 
‘near space, at a lumbering shortlegged run, its heavy 
‘coat swinging on its back. 
- I remember a dirty kind hotel in Balmorrhea— 
‘(a name which somehow sounds like taking the 
‘name of Queen Victoria in vain)—and the deep 
‘cavey lake of Phantom Springs, just outside Bal- 
‘morrhea, and the embarrassing stare of the over- 
dressed prudish black furry cattle as we bathed. 

I remember sitting nearly all day in a garage in 
Los Angeles while Stephanie was being overhauled, 
having an argument about God with some very 
pleasant intelligent mechanics, ex-cavalrymen from 


the Philippines. 


154 THE LITTLE WORLD 


I remember being stuck for want of gasoline at , 
night on the top of a high California mountain road | 
and being found by a very good Samaritan who was . 
short of gasoline himself but gave us enough to 
enable us to reach the long downward grade down | 
which we could slide on our own weight. Not con- | 
tent with this, he followed us conscientiously in his | 
car to make sure that we reached the valley safely. 
And at the bottom of the hill I remember the 
Holy City, headquarters of some cult called the 
P. C. D. W.—the meaning of the initials is secret. — 
They sell rose-jam there and texts and fantastic 
pamphlets praising—if I remember rightly—man 
above God and woman above man. But their 
theories, which were locally reported to be sub- 
versive and dangerous, did not spoil their coffee 
and their kindness in the night to stranded aliens. 

I remember the almost unbearable excitement of 
driving at last up the drive of the best of friends 
between orchards in the Santa Clara Valley, which — 
is almost more lovely than home to me. Yes... 
they haven’t gone to bed yet . . . look at the light 
. . » look at the log fire . . . he’s reading aloud to 
her... Now they've heard us . . . They’ll won-' 
der... Now they’re running out... 


Iil 


E got stuck in a bog in California, four of us 
in Stephanie. It was a particularly black 
and pervasive bog and after three hours of splashing | 


THE STATES AGAIN 155 


‘and wallowing among levered planks, we reached 
_ dry land looking like the submerged tenth. It was 
late and we went to a little wooden inn in a Spanish 

village. When we had knocked for some time, the 
/ proprietor awoke and opened the door. 


“Rooms fer de night ... sure step right in 
_...” he raised the candle to our lamentable be- 
_bogged faces. “Ahyuss ... werl ... dat’s as it 


may be... step right out again, folks, you k’n 
- sleep on de floor in de annex, ef you want... 
_dere’s five udder colored coons dere—jazz enter- 
' tainers—dey’ll make room fer you.” 

And so they did, and sang very sweetly over their 
breakfast next day, too. 


IV 
| HE Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in 
| Arizona is the only object in creation that can- 
not possibly be coldly or superciliously seen. I 
wonder, in passing, whether the word creation can 
_be properly used of the Canyon. Rather it is an 
interruption in the order of created things. Here 

is a desert, as flat and everyday and conventional 
as any desert can be; it is moulded in cream-colored 
sand and spotted with chaparral and low trees and 
'white poppies; mirage lakes shimmer in gold and 
blue on its horizon. As a desert, in fact, it is ag- 
_ gressively orthodox, the eye travels serenely across 


156 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Arizona towards equally serene Utah, when sud- 
denly—Good God, what has happened? There is 
no desert—the desert has fallen through the world 
into hell—there is nothing but blue air perforated. 
by blood-red towers. Gashed by chasm within 
chasm, the world crashes down, from midday into 
twilight, from twilight into night. 

The desert is betrayed; it is revealed as no dese 
at all, but the broadest mountain peak in the world; 
it is slung up under the sky more than a mile abot 
sea-level—and here the cords of the sky have 
broken, the desert has fallen. There is nothing 
higher except the sky; in the chasm the peaks and 
the pyramids, the pillars and the towers and the: 
terrible scarred temples, though four or five thou- 
sand feet high themselves, never dare to rise above 
the rim of the tall false desert. | 

Here is the calm level of Arizona, and thirteen 
miles away, on the other side of chaos, Utah takes 
up the calm line of desert again as though eternity 
had never intervened. 

What an inconceivably, ridiculously large snare. 
for the feet of men the Canyon must have seemed: 
to the first pioneers. ) 

Shorty was an exquisite desert dandy with a very 
broad Mexican hat, yellow shirt, leather sleeveless. 
coat, black neckerchief, flaring leather chaps buckled 
with silver, and high prettily stitched boots. Once 
in his hands we put ourselves on the hoofs of 
mules, and so we descended into the Canyon. Di- 


| 


‘ 


} 


THE STATES AGAIN 157 


rectly we had slipped over the rim it seemed as if— 
death being certain either way—it would be both 
quicker and cheaper to jump on foot over the 4,000- 


_ feet cliffs. But Mommer robbed us of the expres- 
sion of this thought. She was an elderly lady in a 
feathered picture hat and divided skirts, and she 


screamed without ceasing. Not one of us dared 


/murmur in competition with Mommer. Shorty 
christened her so. He was unmoved by her screams 


and addressed her with facetious coquetry. When 
—since she refused to move—he roped her mule 


to his and dragged her away, someone at the tail 
of the party shouted, “What about the Rape of 
_the Sabines?”’ ‘To Mommer we owe our dignity 
_ during two hair-raising days. 


Our mules are the heroes of the story. They 
walked firmly and modestly down practically per- 


_pendicular places, rocks fell upon them, paths gave 
‘way beneath them, the thousandfold echoes of 
_Mommer’s braying made their ears twitch—yet they 


walked tranquilly on air and clouds and unpropped 


'shadows, meditatively chewing dry thorns. Now 
_and then Shorty, who rode ahead, would turn and 


whistle. At once we would find ourselves joggling 


In ignominious and terrifying haste towards him, 
‘like sheep after a shepherd, like trucks after an 


engine. Our stirrups, hanging, as it seemed, paral- 


‘lel with the mules’ necks, clattered about their 
_ cynical ears. 


The mad angular shapes of the peaks within the 


158 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Canyon rose, and their colors were intensified, as 
we sank. ‘There were scarlets and crimsons and 
blood-reds and plum-purples and cream-yellows | 
and blinding whites, all built up in an infinite ar- 
rangement of buttressed horizontal lines. There 
was a radiant glaze of flowers at our feet and 
there were patches of snow poised like angels on. 
the tips of stone needles far above and behind us, — 
Finally there was the river, set in an ultimate night. 
dark cleft of which only the lips were visible from 
the rim. i 

No horizontal lines here, no reminders of the 
work of men’s hands, no scarlets or gay yellows, no 
flowers. We rode down into shadow, into a geo- | 
logical whirlpool of still wild shapes and lines. At. 
the foot of those stormy cliffs, far from sunlight and 
flowery silence, far below the feet of the fantastic | 
red cathedrals and obelisks and pyramids, the 
Colorado River roared. ! 

Between rapids it runs as smoothly as though 
under glass and only the little errant sticks on its. 
surface betray its frightful swiftness. In the rapids — 
there are tall dragons of water, they toss their. 
golden manes and wings, and never bow their heads. | 
There are deserts of smooth indrawn water between ~ 
these crested waves, there are varied levels sepa- | 
rated by deep hinted rocks and by scarred ridges of 
yellow foam. The geography of this dreadful king | 
dom of screaming water never changes. 


THE STATES AGAIN 159 


We slept in a camp at the foot of an olympic 
‘conception of the Flatiron Building, New York 
City, three thousand feet high and done in carmine 
‘red. 

_ Next day we rode twenty-three miles, fifteen 
ialong the edge of the dark cliff that leans over 
‘the river—yet still ourselves four thousand feet 
below the rim. Glimpses of the ghostly pale river 
shot up, as it were, through gashes in the cliff. Now 
‘and then, where a rare cool stream made a little 
oasis of grass and clover and bright poplar trees in 
‘the waste of sandy chaparral and cactus, we paused 
and straightened our creaking limbs. About us the 
pinnacles and peaks were like cactuses in stone. 
Even Mommer was silent as we climbed towards 
_the rim again by a new and even steeper trail. To 
tremble, one felt, might disturb the superhuman 
-balance of one’s mule. ‘The trail was threaded like 
a cord through niches and little tunnels in the sheer 
cliff. The blue shadows of sunset pursued us; as 
_we rose, the drowning wild Canyon sank into a sea 
of blue shadow. 

It seemed outrageous to find—after our tense 
_and dreamlike two days among huge striding col- 
-ored stone shadows—tourists on the rim in tight 
_ skirts and city suits, still cackling through telescopes, 
still buying ‘‘postals,” still thrilling with delicious 
alarm at the loud war-dance of the sophisticated 
and peaceful Hopi Indians who live opposite the 


160 THE LITTLE WORLD 


hotel. Even Mommer had a halo of gorgeous ex- - 
perience. Even Mommer was withdrawn behind - 
the veil of a remembered miracle. And though we) 
too might wait our turn at the telescope, though we 
too might spend hours turning round the ‘dumb. 
waiter’ that displays picture postcards, though we - 
too might sit on Navajo rugs, thrilling as we dodged | 
the whooping swoopings of naturally peacefully in- 
clined Indians—yet we were aloof, it seemed, upon 
a pedestal of yesterday—nobody could mistake us 
for tourists. . . | 
‘Animals and primitive people always know. 
’’ we said to ourselves. For Joe Yellowfeet, 
the most active Hopi Indian, shewed himself a friend. 
of ours. He honored us often by shaking hands. 
with us while still gasping from his war-dance. | 
Sometimes we met him and his relations with ver-. 
milion stripes across their noses, with red feathers 
sticking up round their heads like a park fence and 
swinging down their backs, with beaded buckskin 
coats and frilled leather trousers and heavy moc. 
casins. At other times we found ourselves bowed 
to by exquisite young men in tightwaisted jazz: 
tweeds, and only after a momentary check recog-| 
nized the handsome if rather flattened physiog-. 
nomy that distinguishes the aristocratic Yellowfeet | 
family. 
Rightly are Indians known as the vanishing race. 
Joe, like most other fine wild animals, knows how 
to vanish by taking refuge in protective coloring. 


pe 


THE STATES AGAIN 161 


V 


HE San Francisco-Chicago train made us 
conspicuous by stopping especially for our 
benefit in the middle of the night. On the platform 
there was no lamp, but a ray from one lighted 
shack dimly shewed a sullen Indian face—a face in- 


_'spired by no eagerness to help us to lift our prop- 


erty out of the train. But still in our minds was 
‘comfort and tranquillity born of the advertisement 
that had brought us here—a promise of a hotel 
with twenty-four bedrooms and a regular motor 
‘service to Acoma sixteen miles away. ‘The soft 
‘obstinate darkness of the desert must be a mistake, 
we thought—a misprint upon our minds’ retina; 
‘cups of hot coffee and rooms full of good beds 
beamed serenely in our hopes. 

“Aw say...” sympathetically said the lady 
telegraphist in the lighted shed. ‘‘Who’s bin hand- 
ing you that speel? There ain’t no hotel anywheres 
this side of Albuquerque. There’s a shack with an 
Indian dame in it but her man’s away and she’s 
‘scared of strangers. You can’t get to Acoma to- 
‘morrow neether—’nless you hike. Well say, ain’t 
feeetoo bad...” 

She was a kind woman but had no power over cir- 
cumstances. I have often wondered what her life 
‘was and what she ate and whom she loved—appar- 
‘ently alone by a little lamp in a black desert. 

We found the Indian dame’s shack, a blacker 


162 THE LITTLE WORLD 


incefinite mass in indefinite blackness. We knocked 
till the house shook, and after a long time, in a crack 
of the narrowly opened door, a woman appeared, 
wrapped in a red blanket, her thick plaits of black. 
hair hanging forward over her crouching shoulders, 
She was afraid of us. Her fear gave us a kind 
of bandit feeling and I put my foot in the crack 
of the door. This frightened her still more. ‘No. 
room, no room... twenty man here... All 
bed snlifup een | 
After cooing like doves for a while without effect, | 
we pushed in. We selected the cleanest of the dirty. 
bedrooms. | 
Once we came into the light the woman was hyp- | 
notized by S.’s monocle. I don’t know whether 
it made us seem more or less dangerous than she 
had expected. But it conquered her. | 
So at least the night was negotiated. But even. 
the kind light of day, making steady torches of. 
the bleak yellow mesas and polishing the pale sur- 
face of the desert, could not bridge over the sixteen. 
miles to Acoma. Acoma was a place we had come. 
far to see. Could we telephone to Albuquerque for 
acar? The kind lady in the depot shack was lamen- 
tably replaced by two very unamiable Indian men 
with faces like irritated horses. They would not 
even take their feet off the table to shew us how 
the telephone worked, A ring at the telephone only 
produced replies in an unknown tongue. Vague 
memories of Fenimore Cooper did not supply us. 


THE STATES AGAIN 163 


with the aboriginal translation of—‘‘A Ford car, 
please, and look sharp about it... ”’ 

| We returned disconsolate to our Indian hostess. 
There was a smart little Dodge car outside her 
door. In the house were Gilbert and Beebo eating 
fried eggs. They introduced themselves. Both, 
T think, must have been partly Indian. Beebo was 
dressed like a cowboy—except for gentlemanly 
gaiters; Gilbert wore a dainty check suiting and 
seemed to be a traveling salesman. To us he sold 
nothing—except the only thing we wished to buy, 
a sight of Acoma. 

It was good, after the hours of despair during 
which our feet had almost taken root in the desert 
sand, to feel wheels going round beneath us and 
to see the mesas coming closer. Good, but not com- 
fortable. Rocks, cactuses, dry river beds, dead 
coyotes, acres of tangling chaparral and bottomless 
sand—all these were no obstacle to Gilbert and 
Beebo. 

_ Mesa Incantada—the enchanted mesa—was on 
our left, and Beebo was ready with the story. The 
‘mesa towered above us, a coffin two hundred feet 
high; it had no slopes, only vertical cliffs holding 
‘up a flat plane against the sky. But once there was 
‘a way up, Beeba said—only nobody knew how 
long ago. Indians, it seemed, remember everything 
but dates. There was an Indian tribe up there, a 
‘very prosperous tribe, since no one could reach 
‘them to beat them in battle. But they were beaten 


164 THE LITTLE WORLD 


all the same. An earthquake destroyed their stair- 
way. They were imprisoned two hundred feet 
above the world—starving, with all the kindly col. 
ored world at their feet. 

‘‘“Acoma folks say their ghosts and their devils 
yell around up there on dark nights,’”’ said Beebo. 
‘Dunno if it’s true. Anyways, I often hearum. . . ” 

‘Some guy climbed up there one time and there 
was their houses, sure ’nough, and their dead bones.” 
Gilbert added. 

Acoma is built on a mesa just the same shape, 
but it isn’t a cofiin, for Acoma lives and thrives. 
The Dodge car drew up at the foot of a long dune 
of sand blown against the yellow cliff. The flat lit- 
tle yellow houses of Acoma look like machicolations 
on the top of a donjon keep. A social impasse 
checked us at the foot. We all wanted to climb up 
to Acoma, we all had suitcases. Might innocent 
paleface suitcases in an open Dodge car dwell fora 
few hours safely alone among prowling Red 
Indians? | 

“Bury ’em,’’ suggested Beebo and this we began 
to do. But, glancing up, we found every cliff knobby 
with the heads of surprised Indian onlookers ob- 
serving this strange paleface rite. So we left the 
suitcases looking rather silly, up to their middles in 
sand, the cynosure of all Acoma eyes. 

The sand-dune, leaning at a steep angle against 
the mesa, made heavy climbing. We sank calf-deet 
at every step and were glad when we came to the 


THE STATES AGAIN 165 


niches cut out in the cliff, each foot-niche supple- 
‘mented by neat hand-niches, which made climbing 
‘comparatively easy. 

At the top of the cliff Frank awaited us in his 
‘capacity of Acting Governor of Acoma. Frank had 
the rather horselike flat-eyed look characteristic of 
his race. His heavy black hair was not shingled—it 
swept his shoulders. On his head he wore a broad 
sombrero, and on the rest of him blue dungarees. 
His wife was very stout and wore a light chemise 
and the two long plaits of her hair. The other 
ladies of his family, in colored blankets, were bent 
forward under the weight of babies strapped to 
their backs—bent forward so that their black plaits 
swung free before their breasts. 

_ Frank led us most courteously round the village 
of Acoma. The houses had three storeys, arranged 
in three steps as children might pile wooden bricks 
—a short brick on a long brick and a little cube 
brick on the top of that. Each storey housed a 
family. To reach Frank’s house we climbed a lad- 
der to the first floor and found ourselves in a little 
front yard; here we were faced by another little 
nouse flanked by ovens like beehives. By another 
tadder we climbed to the roof of that house 
and found an even smaller front yard and even 
smaller house—Frank’s house. Frank’s wife was 
dainting black squirls and squiggles on roughly 
shaped baked white pots. The little cubic house 
was beautifully clean; the beds were niches in the 


166 THE LITTLE WORLD 


mud wall with Navajo blankets in them; there wer 


W 


windows with splintery foggy mica panes in them > 


On the walls hung the family jewelry, chains o: 
roughly wrought silver and turquoise. Hanging 
on the wall, too, were Frank’s robe of office—z 
dainty thing of cherry-red tulle—and a walking 
stick that had belonged to Abraham Lincoln 
Lincoln had seven walking-sticks and he gave one tc 
each of the self-governing Indian pueblos. 


Frank took us to see the church, which dates back 
to Spanish times. The Spaniards when they first 


crossed the desert left a priest behind with order: 
to save Acoma’s soul. Beebo told us that the 


people of Acoma did not at first appreciate the 


necessity of having their souls saved. Indeed they 


pushed the priest over the edge of the cliff. He 


was, however, carrying an umbrella at the time, 
having imported cautious European habits into a 
country where it only rains about once in forty 


years. The umbrella unfurled and the priest, cling. 
ing to the crook and no doubt congratulating him. 


self on his forethought, floated so slowly to desert 


level that the astounded citizens of Acoma were 


there to meet him when he landed. There they 


were, lying on their noses in honor of the miracle. 
The priest might have formed a limited company 
for the patenting and exploitation of the parachute 


—instead, he built a church. It is as if Sir Isaac 


Newton had merely eaten the apple and praised 


God for it instead of discovering gravitation. At 


THE STATES AGAIN 167 


‘any rate there is the church in Acoma still, a yellow 
‘mud church with towers like ears. And it is evi- 
dent that the repentant converts gave of their best 
‘effort good measure, for only Indians could have 
designed and executed those mud gargoyles. The 
‘results of the priest’s flight, therefore, endure to 
‘this day, for, ever since, a priest has visited Acoma 
regularly to conduct mass—and ever since, no 
doubt, the police of Acoma have removed umbrellas 
from their criminals before pushing them over. 
“For if folks don’t act right,” said Beebo, “they 
‘push ’em over, same as then.” 

“All Acoma folks very good,” insisted Frank 
with a deprecatory smile, as he exchanged glances 
‘with a demoniac gargoyle. 


GEOGRAPHY 
ORTH AFRICA, close up on the starboarc 


side, was made of shadows, and there wer 

little towns drowning in the shadows. The tide o1 
the lonely ochre cliffs went up and down with no 
body to mark its changes. In the coves ther 
were little white beaches where no baby had eve 
set spade. Any unknown little-visited land acros 
a few miles of sea is very exciting; every shore, seei 
so, means to me a fine but impossible hope regis 
tered in that part of the brain that makes fine bu 
hopeless plans. “If ever I have a home it will b 
among pale inhuman beaches like those; if ever 
have babies, they shall slide on teatrays down sand 
dunes that have only been trailed before by reveren_ 
warm winds; we'll find strange berries among th 
gray shrubs that veil those mountain sides; we 
watch extraordinary little animals on the pockett 
yellow alps near those summits, and we’ll go hom 
in the evening through an uneven pale-pink villag 
to a heavy tea in a wide Moorish house with thick 
cool, plastered walls... ” ) 
The glamorous band of sea is a barrier acros. 
which thoughts of climate, mosquitoes, servaly 


troubles and sanitation cannot come to me. 
168 


GEOGRAPHY 169 


There is a crying need for imagination-geography 

in our schools. ‘The text-books of that lovely 
science would be silent on the subject of exports and 
imports, principal bays and capes, watersheds and 
the mileage of rivers; such details as flora and 
fauna would have other and more adventurous 
headings and names. All the feelings of lands 
and seas would rise like a scent from between the 
pages. 
As it is, few people know or love geography. 
‘Soldiers and sailors, of course, walk about the world 
‘on chunks of geography; they become expert in spite 
of themselves, and often their knowledge exhales 
‘that essence of the feeling of the far paths they have 
followed—that glory of very-far-away that I call 
‘imagination-geography. But of the women and 
civilians on board our P. & O., a good many were 
not aware what continent lay enity south of us— 
(poor Africa, one would have thought that by now 
it had done enough to make its mark)—hardly any- 
body but the captain knew when we were looking at 
Portugal and when at Spain; we passed Cape St 
Vincent without being able to find out what hap- 
pened there and why and if so who won; we mis- 
took Gibraltar for an island and no doubt some of 
us insulted it by calling it Crete or the Crimea or 
St. Michael’s Mount... . 

At least we all know something about Malta now. 
The very babies now on board will wake up and cor- 
rect the teacher when Malta is mentioned during 


170 THE LITTLE WORLD 


future geography lessons. They will not remember 
the exports and imports but they will see again the 
hooded women and the goats. 

Valetta is like a beehive from the sea. Except 
for a few steeples, turrets and cupolas, there is 
nothing to interrupt the closebuilt curve of the steep 
hill-encrusting city. Horizontal lines, built into 
pyramids, dominate the whole island of Malta; all 
the houses are as flat and square-cornered as bricks. 
There is scarcely any color but cream-gold in all 
Valetta. 

It was a national holiday when we arrived. The 
Maltese have a long memory—they still, it seems, 
make merry over the semi-miraculous raising of a 
siege in the sixteenth century. In the yellow 
shadows of the diving narrow streets the towns- 
people were rejoicing; banners were strung across 
the narrow chasms of the streets. Each gay per- 
spective was stoppered at the far end by blue sea. 
The church bells rejoiced; they rang as urgently as 
firebells. Only in the great church of the Knights. 
of Malta it was quiet. There was so much color 
there that one hardly missed the sunlight. But 
outside one was dazzled again. The women, hooded 
and mantled in black, sat on the church steps, and 
they alone were serenely shaded from the sun. 
Their great hoods were stiffened so as to lie—a 
horizontal yard of starched black—on their heads. 
There was room for a baby or two in the generous 
shade. The cloaks of the women hung curtained! 


GEOGRAPHY 171 


from this broad winged hood. Faces look beautiful 
so shadowed. 
| The milkman of Malta is the goatherd; the goats 
carry their milk themselves. The goats rustle along 
the rocky pathways and along the narrow steep 
streets and across the wide places on which grind- 
‘stones stand like prehistoric petrified mushrooms. 
‘When a customer appears the goats stand patiently 
browsing on dust while the goatherd milks into the 
-customer’s own vessel—which is generally a demo- 
bilized beer or whiskey bottle. 
| We mounted a frail-looking cab drawn by a sad 
/horse with a very long plume standing between its 
ears. We drove to the Hal-saflieni Hypogeum 
simply because we wanted to know what it was. 
_ We found catacombs said to be nearly five thousand 
‘years old. Behind a man with a lantern we filed 
_ down a winding stone stairway and through a long 
_tangled series of dreadful caves. There were red 
paintings on the very low domed ceilings—or per- 
haps they were only stains of blood from the lacer- 
ated skulls of tourists who forgot to stoop. Dark 
cavities, like murderers’ snares for doomed inno- 
cence, were set between squarehewn pillars. There 
was a wide well in which the water was still sweet. 
There was an altar ready, even now, for sacrifice. 
There were the skull, arms and ribs of a five- 
thousand-year-ago man, buried in an_ upright 
position. Seven thousand skeletons were found in 
the catacombs. 


172 THE LITTLE WORLD 


After about twenty minutes in the fierce gaping - 


maw of the island, one was convinced that one. 


would never see daylight again. And then, into 


one of the sepulchral shafts, daylight struck and, 


looking upward, one saw the shell of the prim in- 
nocent Victorian villa which for generations has 
stood all unaware above this dark secret. Gener-' 
ations of respectable persons admired those wall. | 


papers, leaned from those window-frames, passe 
tamely across those gaping thresholds, while all 


the time beneath their feet the pagan old altar 
waited, hungry for sacrifice, waited among the bones 
of seven thousand men. 


ANGELS IN THE RED SEA 
HE Red Sea was red-hot. What wind there 


was moved at the same speed as we did and 
‘counted for nothing. We wandered about pur- 
‘suing ghosts of rumors of breezes as sceptically and 
‘as conscientiously as members of the Society for 
‘Psychical Research. The ghosts had always been 
laid by the time we arrived, and, in honor of their 
memory, we sat and hated one another. A cube 
of hot sticky Red Sea was confined in a canvas tank 
on the lower deck; the tank was designed to hold 
three thin passengers or two and a half fat ones, 
but we crushed irritably into it six at a time. 

We hated one another yet we could not escape 
from our fellows. 

I invented a crowd of harassed guardian angels 
in the bows. Every passenger—even every un- 
blessed steerage passenger—was represented in 
that company. The angels of the officers, of the 
stewards, and of the Lascars, if they existed, had 
their quarters elsewhere. The guardians of the 
children were never seated for more than twenty 
seconds before, with a murmured, “Excuse me,” 
they hurried away to meet some urgent need. The 
guardians of the few good were sleepy and com- 

173 


174 THE LITTLE WORLD 


placent. Old Mrs. Purey’s angel, indeed, was never 
in demand at all, except when his charge dropped a 
stitch or mislaid her spectacles. He was immensely 

stout, and affected the philosophical, innocuously 

epigrammatic manner common to those on whom the 

world makes no claim. 

‘It must be the heat,” said Young Taylan 
angel, who had shocked, innocent eyes. ‘I can’t) 
keep my man up to his standards at all. He’s hold-, 
ing Mrs. Wellington’s hand now and I can’t find 
a trace of Mabel on his conscience. Yet when they 
parted at Tilbury .. .” He hurried away again) 
towards the Abaen tee deck. | 

“Tt’ll be hotter yet,” giggled pretty Mrs. Wel-) 
lington’s angel. “But Mrs. W. and I have been this 
way seven times and we’re acclimatized. Young 
Taylor hasn’t made any impression on us, I need 
hardly say. Nobody has since—well, we must 
amuse ourselves somehow ... ” 

“Quite right,” agreed Mrs. Purey’s fat angel. 
‘““Hlappiness is a duty. Some people put happiness 
on and off like a robe. It should be rooted within, 
like bones.” | 

Bennet’s angel laughed abruptly. He had a white 
sour face and, like Bennet himself, carried a little 
flask. “Happiness...” he said. “A duty? We. 
worked that out twenty years ago.” He sipped 
from his flask. ‘Yes, happiness, as you say, should 
be rooted warmly among the tired bones...” | 

Tetherton’s angel was obviously accustomed to 


IN THE RED SEA 


ANGELS 


THE 
0 


UEDERATY OF ILLINOIS 


Pt se eS 
= ~ - = 


ANGELS IN THE RED SEA 177 


ementary military life. “Oh, that method 
wesn’t pay,” he said, and he had caught from his 
sbaltern, Tetherton, the throaty guilty manner of 
ae trying to uphold high principles of which he is 
chamed. 

“Tt’s a man’s duty and all that, if you know 
yaat I mean, to keep decent and fit and what not 

. especially before natives.”’ 

The heat wove trembling coils of air between 
te ship and the burnt, corrugated coast. The still 
et touched one’s lips like fever. 

Young Taylor’s angel reappeared irritably in 
font of Tetherton’s. ‘“‘Hasn’t your man got any- 
ting better to do than annoy mine? It isn’t funny, 
tough it seems to make Mrs. Wellington laugh. 
Ye can’t help it if our Adam’s apple is a little 
tominent.” His temper flared suddenly. ‘Don’t 
yu see that he hates himself enough already? You 
take him feel al] Adam’s apple in Mrs. Welling- 
tn’s sight. Oh, yes, he’s forgotten Mabel now— 
¢d your man can only make silly jokes . . . ” 

“Oh, well, my man’s only ragging. Can’t you 
sind a little fun? It’s hot and we must work our 
cergy off. Come along with me and settle things.” 

Mrs. Wellington’s angel giggled again. ‘But 
‘aylor is simply a sketch, isn’t he? Anyway it’s 
to hot to be kind.” 

“It'll be hotter yet,’ said Mrs. Purey’s angel 
facidly. “How glad I am that my old woman knits 
‘ much. She is rising to heaven on a lifeline of 


178 THE LITTLE WORLD 


heather-mixture wool. But if I were you, de: 
I’d run along and give your Mrs. Wellingten 
hint.” 

“PfE . . . as if she couldn’t look after herself! 

The ship rolled a little in the slow blue sea. | 
rim of white ran up and down the parched unvisit| 
beaches of Arabia. A couple of whales in the d. 
tance flung up light fans of spray. A great noise } 
hot babies crying drearily haunted the air. Behiil 
that noise there was, it seemed, a soundless ro: 
of heat to deafen hearts. A sensation of dreadf 
excitement was poised on the deck. | 

Tetherton’s angel came back, limp with sulle. 
ness. “It really is your job,” he said to Mrs. Wi 
lington’s angel. “I can’t control my man while yo; 
woman eggs him on.” { 

Taylor’s angel followed him furiously. “Cd 
your man off. Call him off, or there'll be murde 
Stop him grinning with his gums like that. We’: 
cleverer than he is, though we never went to scl 
Mabel loves us . . . Call your man off.” 

“Oh, stow it—it’s oat fun,’’ shouted Tether 
angel, whose face was scarlet. ‘Does the silly ai 
imagine that Mrs. Wellington ever had any use f! 
him anyway ?”’ 

The heat jerked their features and limbs a 
surdly. They jostled each other like furious ch: 
dren as they ran back to their charges. Mz, 
Purey’s angel suddenly looked alarmed. ‘WI 
. .. why ... she’s stopped knitting . . . "GBH 


ANGELS IN THE RED SEA 179 


yaddled away. Soon all were gone except Bennet’s 
«gel and Mrs. Wellington’s. 

“TI simply must go and watch the row,” said Mrs. 
Vellington’s angel, after fidgetting for a little while. 
'm not going to interfere, of course. J’m not to 
fame if they choose to make fools of themselves. 
-|believe they’ll murder each other before night.” 
Before night. There was a great brass wall of 
ay to climb before night. 

Bennet did not need his angel. He had found 
pace of akind. He was asleep by the door of the 
lr. A sunbeam, refracted through an empty glass, 
(«plored his crumpled figure as the ship rolled. For 
i long time Bennet’s angel sat watching the sea. 
like fairies over a troubled city, the flying fish 
vrang from the eaves of the waves and flew with 
‘lilt till they slipped down distant white chimneys 
¢ spray. In pursuit of the ship came the dolphins, 
» near that one could see the trembling steel 
‘rength of their bodies, as they curved themselves— 
jut as bows—in the air. 

_Perim was in sight. A gag upon the mouth of 
ae dead Red Sea. A scarred island crushed with 
zat. A terrible sleek island enclosed in a brazen 
ust of heat, as a more fortunate island might be 
aclosed in a shell of trees and flowers. The round 
\l-tanks watched the sky with an insane stare. 

' Mrs. Wellington’s angel came back. ‘Oh, my 
ear, Taylor and Tetherton had a fight. I knew 
vey would. ‘Taylor said, ‘I'll kill you for that,’ 


180 THE LITTLE WORLD 


and Tetherton danced about squawking, ‘Kamera’ 
and with his toe unhitched Taylor’s deck chair j 
that Taylor sat with a bang among the ruins . 4 
Oh, my dear, I thought we’d have died . | 
looked so comic. And they fought andl thd 
angels fought and—what do you think?—M), 
Purey let her knitting drop and upped and box! 
Taylor’s ears—you should have seen her old ange} 
face as he pulled her off. The knitting fell into t) 
sea. Three of the flappers are in hysterics ail 
the captain says he’ll put Taylor in irons. And ty 
Mrs. W.’s gone down to her cabin all of a dithy 
She’ll be joyful and excited over her old letters f: 
the next hour or so—pretending it isn’t true th: 
the man who wrote them died at Ypres... 
What’s your man doing?” | 

‘Still asleep. Still asleep.” 

The island of Perim passed slowly, and, behil 
it, the charred mountains of the mainland revolve, 
moving in and out of clouds. The polished sea t+ 
tween the ship and Perim was scratched by the fii 
of sharks and pocked by shoals of leaping fish. 

And suddenly the wind and the world came in) 
that hot void. A terrible doubt seemed dispelll 
by the gay wind. The cords of presentiment ail 
doom slipped from the strangled throat of the dz. 
The air was clean of cries and of the drumming 
heat. A cool crown of serenity clasped the for 
heads of the angels as they returned in quiet grou}. 

“The hand of the heat has let us go,” sal 


ANGELS IN THE RED SEA 181 


nnet’s angel, rising a little unsteadily to meet 
tem. ‘We were prisoners. We are free. Good- 
eae 

“Why—where are you going?” 

“I’m taking my man home.” 

“Home? But isn’t he due to land tomorrow at 
iden?” 

“Land? What is land to him now? I’m taking 
tm home.” 


PICNIC IN ADEN 


DEN was on fire—at least, every sense bt 
the eye told one so. If one shut one’s ey 
flames seemed to crackle against one’s quiveriy 
skin, but in sight, there were only yellow fork| 
mountains like flames trembling against the bras) 
sky. In several Ford cars we drove through Adi 
and the hot breath of the fiery mountains roar! 
about us. | 
We were undergoing a picnic, in search of} 
breeze. It was our duty to go first to the tanks all 
then to the oasis. Residents in Aden consider thr 
tanks very interesting. Probably all the inhal- 
tants of Aden go up on Fords or camels to look t 
their tanks every day, and congratulate one anoth: 
on having stuff like that to look at in a place whe: 
it never rains. Every time they have a bath thr 
swell with pride, I expect. And now and then, } 
very great occasions, they drink a little water ; 
a great treat. The camels, I am sure, do not “yr 
pathize with the demonstrations of enthusiasm t 
the tanks’ edge. Camels, it is said, drink only abct 
three drops of water a month. They have t? 
faces of typical prohibitionists, you can see. Th 


look like traditional schoolmarms; they carry et 
182 


PICNIC IN ADEN 183 


eads at an angle that suggests sour prudishness; 
aey compress their long hare-lips; their bulging 
yes are forever shocked and frigid. All goods and 
ehicles in Aden, except the ubiquitous Ford cars, 
re carried or drawn by camels. Probably Fords 
ave to appeal to them too sometimes, when they 
reak down on the steep hills. Camels would en- 
oy those occasions. They would enjoy saying, “I 
old you so.” You can see they are always shocked 
ecause the Fords wear no fur. 

' The desert around Aden imitates water; on all 
ides imaginary water shimmers. Water seems to 
ave flooded the pathetic golf-links of baked, blade- 
ess desert; far-off native villages seem to stand in 
akes among their silvery reflections. There is no 
vater really, and its semblance only intensifies the 
dare. The hot wind dries up the mockery of 
coolness. 

- Our faithful boiling Fords are assembling at their 
lestination. Here, in the oasis, fainting trees are 
Ylanted in the sand. There is a summerhouse. 
There is even an embryonic Zoo—for this is a 
vleasure resort. We drape ourselves limply about 
he cages of the three gazelles (of the kind “I 
iever loved” )—four dog-faced baboons and a por- 
‘upine. A heroic steward has kept a piece of ice 
ilive all the way from the ship; it dies now inef- 
‘ectually in tepid ginger beer. Why have we come? 
[he porcupine looks at us in surprise and shrugs 
ts shoulders with a cynical rattle of quills. There 


184 THE LITTLE WORLD 


is distant thunder. In Aden I believe that you ¢; 
distinguish the rainy season from the dry seax 
by the fact that, during the former, distant thund 
can be heard twice a week. 

The weaver-birds’ nests hang by long stror 
threads from the branches. ‘The nests are qui 
round and exquisitely woven; their doors, pierce 
at a downward angle, escape the sun and cat 
the air. Weaver-birds, in natural pride, strut abo 
giving little lectures'on their art. But we are tc 
hot to be instructed. 

Shall we go back to the ship? At least it couldn 
be hotter. We remember the ship sentimentalh 
there was once a corner, aft of the deck-tennis ne 
where someone once felt a little breath of air. W 
reach the quay; the ship looks like heaven, so ta’ 
and pale-summited upon the lapping cool wate 
her decks capped by awnings, the shadows of hi 
feet churned by diving-boys and boats full of ostrit | 
feathers. 

‘“Have-a-dive ... Dive-for-shilling ... Loo 
lady, very fine feather only fifteen rupee...” | 
is a hot clamor, overloading the fainting air. Pe 
haps our oasis was cooler after all. Surely th 
weaver-birds’ nests were swinging a little Gy 
Have we fled from the only breeze in the world? 


YUNNAN 


' I 


UV UNNAN is a forgotten province, a piece of 
China mislaid by the world. Yunnan has 
jeclared itself independent, but I do not suppose 
the world heard the declaration very clearly. You 
rannot get to Yunnanfu, the capital of Yunnan, 
trom the China side, without riding for a month or 
jo on a donkey, and somehow revolutions and 
declarations cannot be very impressive when made 
dy places to which the approach is so humble and so 


cedious. 

_ But there is a quicker way to Yunnanfu—you 
have to leave China to find it. From Hongkong 
you take a pig-boat to Haiphong, in Tonkin; from 


Haiphong a little harum-scarum French train car- 


ries you up for three days towards the sky. You 
must spend two steamy and fleabitten nights in lit- 


tle primitive inns. The first day you wriggle like 


a worm through close wet jungles of bananas and 
bamboos and oozy palms and snaky creepers. The 
second day your train cleaves red-wealed moun- 
tains. And on the third day you follow a red river 


along plumed ravines. The river is a little disciple 
185 


186 THE LITTLE WORLD 


of the Yang-tse. On its face I could see, in little, 
all the tricks and fantasies the Yang-tse had first 
shewn me—the glaze of intense swiftness on vivid | 
water, the cream-filled bowls of the whirlpools, the 
frozen wave that hangs over a rock in mid-rapids, | 
the different levels and contrary impulses of tor- 
tured water. The river has done the work of a 
genie for the French engineers who built the rail- 
way, it has moved mountains, it has carved deep 
gorges, it has bound beetling rocks together with - 
the roots of trees on slopes so steep that a bird in 
the crest of one tree can sing to a mouse burrowing - 
in the roots of another. The train fears rocks no 
more than it stops for a bird’s singing; it simply) 
takes advantage of the work of the fairy river, oc 
cupying itself irresponsibly in leaping from side to. 
side of rapids by means of thin hopeful bridges. 
Yunnanfu has a big forty-mile-long lake the color 
of a dark pearl. Along the high side of the moun- 
tains that border this lake goes the train, freed at 
last of its dependence on the river, through 
orchards and, at last, across a broad well-cultivated 
tableland pricked with poplars—to arrive at 
Yunnanfu, a common, crowded railway station | 
| 


ee et ee 


der a low dull sky that hides the mountains. 

Yunnanfu is an independent city, even its climate _ 
—at over six thousand feet up—scorns compromise. 
The city must be sought, it will not welcome you. 
Outside the walls one may find all the things that 
never need to be sought—a club, a French-Greek | 


1 
mn 
CFs ae ” 
y “¢ 
, 
0, 
rf ic _ ’ 
Fg: ww OAR 2 | 
rT . » 
at \ 


[Hs 
LA 


OG) bl Jamey BY.< eat 
feet 2 Lf am 

Sy o — a '\ 

————— 1 


TRIBESWOMAN, YUNNANFU 


THE Lignany 
OF The 
CRVERSTY QF ULLndis 


YUNNAN 189 


otel, cocktails, hospitable men who make jocosities 
bout “the ladies.”” But at the gate of Yunnanfu 
ne enters a China that is difficult and rare, and one 
oes not easily leave it again, for it is a great city. 
t must be very great, for it contains half a con- 
inent. 

In the city everyone in the streets should be 
cooked at as intently as oneself is looked at by 
sveryone. For in Yunnanfu every citizen is charming 
othe eyes. The tribeswomen are gaunt and hand- 
,ome; their dress is as gay as lanterns in the narrow 
shady streets. The typical woman wears a faded 
nauve or rose-red tunic, bright blue or green trous- 
srs, white ankle-puttees, and pointed curved 
embroidered shoes, mounted on thick short extra 
soles like pattens. She is Lo-lo, not Chinese, so 
her feet are not bound. On her head she wears a 
blue square of cotton as a hood and, balanced askew 
on the top of the hood, a tiny-crowned, big-brimmed 
straw hat which is kept in position by a silver chain 
buckled under the chin. Her baby sprawls crablike 
against her back in a big gaudy handkerchief; its 
little hands and feet, with silver bangles on wrists 
and ankles, dangle at the four corners of the hand- 
kerchief; its placid sleepy dirty face, against the 
nape of its mother’s neck, is framed in a fierce- 
eyed, whiskered tiger hat. 

The tribespeople of Yunnan, of whom the Lo-los 
form the majority, are despised by the Chinese. 
The Chinese call them dogs and profess to believe 


190 THE LITTLE WORLD 


that, when they wear kilts, it is to conceal thei 
tails. But, remembering cities of Yunnan, on 
seems always to have seen Chinese sitting on chair 
looking at nothing, Chinese lying on beds smokin 
opium, Chinese looking on at quarrels, Chinese ric 
ing nervously on led ponies—and Lo-los alway 
working. Especially the short sturdy women o 
the P’u-la tribes, swinging their kilts as they strid 
in groups on bare strong shapely legs, their ros 
weatherbeaten faces bowed under great loads—d 
not deserve the patronizing sneer of the Chines 
city woman, trussed in gaudy figured satin, totterin 
on helpless crushed feet under her crimson and ye 
low deep-frilled umbrella of false modesty. 

On the air of Yunnanfu rings nearly always th 
clanking of prisoners’ chains. Everywhere ther 
are prisoners, ankle chained to ankle, repairing th 
cobbled alley-ways, carrying loads of earth or can 
of water, cursing and prodding the slow oxen an 
buffaloes which draw waggons whose wheels ar 
never round. Nearly all the real work of the cit 
runs to the wretched tune of chains. The men ar 
mostly brigands serving the ends of a rare justice 
If all the brigands in that district were at larg 
there would be no room to move upon the moun 
tains, so the authorities have to step in now an 
then to relieve overcrowding of the foremost loca 
industry. 

Once in the early morning I was ache b 
the marching clank of little treble chains—and ther 


‘ 
i ep 


THE LiQHAn? 
OF THE 
EERO OF LOIS 


YUNNAN | 193 


vere the baby brigands shuffling by, of any age from 
even to fifteen, thin and in rags, ankle dragging 


yore chained ankle, but all chattering shrilly. 


_ A funeral is a far gayer thing to meet. There 
vas one at which the dead man’s pony assisted, all 
Jone up in white paper frills like a ham. The male 
mourners, each laboriously supported by a coolie 
ind a staff rosetted with paper flowers, though ap- 
yarently quite cheerful and well, were swathed in 
white and wore on their heads superstructures like 
rows of white croquet-hoops springing from brow 
to nape. The widow, though in orthodox white, 
must walk unsupported, like the pony. Behind her 
came a crowd of gay chattering women in their 
brightest and best satin brocades, tight trousers 
and embroidered peg-top shoes. 

But even if there were no citizens in Yunnanfu, 
there would always be the chance at every corner 
of meeting very strange strangers—at this junction 
of caravan routes from Burma, from Tibet, from 
Western China or the North. 

Outside a booth I met a traveling priest. He 


was very tall and wore a flippant Dolly Varden 
type of hat, tilted forward, bent down in front and 
up behind—or rather the brim of the hat was Dolly 


Varden, the crown was absent. ‘The space where 


‘the crown should have been was occupied by the 


priest’s own shaven skull rising neatly through the 


hole and encircled by a blue band, a rudimentary 
turban. The man wore an immense quilted coat, 


194. THE LITTLE WORLD | 
not in the least ragged but exquisitely patched al 
over in white and various shades of blue. Ever 
his shoes were neatly pieced together of little blu 
and white shreds. He carried a tall staff and ¢ 
begging bowl. In contrast with that huge jig-saw 
man, all the crazy street—a-dazzle with gold sign 
and swinging lanterns and lintels painted with 
birds, and eaves alive with dolphins, and dark “ 

| 


houses guarded by elephants and walls watching witl 
one hot red cyclopean painted eye—all looked sud 
denly sane. 

In Mengtsz, Yunnan, halfway between Yunnanft 
and Tonkin, we came to live. In Mengtsz I find 
myself settling down domestically for the first time 
in my life, going to market as though I were al 
housewife in Putney, S.W. 

On ponies and on foot, in buffalo carts and ox 
carts, with or without captive pigs, ducks, chickens} 
foxes or leopards, everyone is coming into Mengtsz 
market through the dark gate that pierces the thick 
wall of the city. Tribespeople have come for miles 
from the remoter mountains, some loaded, some 
carrying nothing more than a couple of onions and 
a persimmon for sale. The tribespeople have 
wrinkled, humorous faces, some of them have fair 
hair and gray eyes, the features of most look more 
Western than Eastern. Some of them look like 
little Greek soldiers in their lilting kilts. Some 
wear wide leather bands, thickly studded with sil- 
ver, round their heads; some have broad blue em: 


i | 


La] 
: 7 
(ea y as, 
Ay \ \ TRA 
| 1 
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\\\\ Ws L 
ReAb te See Veal 
eee im 8 
Se te Wa 
cS SS Te 
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F de 
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. 
NS 
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; f' y 
:) VY ‘ . 
Kags : ff wmiansyl | y 
AAAY pie /¢ i 
(Ese Vl A (il, 
ea Ly A iit \\t 
Cay 
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S sae Uji ii 
Ss t : 


TRIBESWOMAN, MENGTSZ 


i 


Beis biy ee an ETRE ee Bt Bh: URE 


Mili Ay ALY 
j i | 
‘ : 


THE Lignadty 
OF THE. 
UEVERUTY UF HLUMaTs 


YUNNAN 197 


broidered sunbonnets and aprons caught with silver 
buckles at the shoulders; some have their own thick 
hair bound with silver cords and silk into a big 
turban from which a cascade of hair escapes over 
each ear. Some wear enormous dark-blue turbans, 
tight jackets with sailor collars and striped sleeves 
and—hitching up the hem of the jackets behind— 
curious mid-Victorian bustles. Some wear black 
and scarlet strappings picked out in silver on short 
sleeveless tunics, and these look much more military 
than do the soldiers who slouch about in dirty 
gray cotton uniforms on thin bandy stockinged 
legs. 

The Annamites move in the crowd, immigrants 
from Tonkin on the heels of the French. They 
always wear chestnut-brown or black with a touch 
of scarlet or applegreen, and their black turbans 
are very neat and close under their huge balanced 
straw hats. A respectable Annamite woman keeps 
her teeth enamelled black, and the smile on her 
rather pretty pale face is thereby made atrocious, 
like a gash. 

There is hardly room to move in the market. 
Only the buffaloes by sheer weight can make room. 
The buffaloes crawl in long obstructive strings 
through the cramped streets; they look at nothing, 
they turn aside for nothing. Housewife from 
London, S.W., and Lo-lo chief alike may find them- 
selves trundled ignominiously along from behind by 


those broad blunt horns. The buffalo’s head is 


198 THE LITTLE WORLD 


wedged into his yoke, so perhaps he cannot take ar 
intelligent interest in the world, and perhaps the 
cart that he draws, with its two massive sections of 
untrimmed log for wheels, is rather like a Jugger 
naut car and bumps his poor tail if he pauses tc 
consider the claims of other marketers. 

The dogs are all out marketing; they lay in stores 
and never pay their bills except in the bruises and 
sores that result from kicks and blows. Nothing 
that cannot speak is gently treated in Mengtsz. 
The chickens, alive, are hung up by their feet and 
groan hoarsely in unchickenlike voices; the carp 
gasp desperately in parched masses; the limbs of 
the ponies and donkeys bleed and tremble beneath 
great burdens, and some ponies walk on deformed 
ankles, the hoofs being turned up in front like skis, 
But children and old people, though very much in 
the way on such a busy day, are always loved; little 
babies are strapped on the backs of their tired shrill 
mothers, and older babies are carried on proud 
fathers’ arms. ‘There is a ragged beggar carrying 
on his back his very aged mother—a knotted gray 
dreadful figure in an aura of fluttering rags and gray 
hair; her brown bare skeleton legs point stiffly for- 
ward from beneath her good son’s arms. ‘There is 
a blind beggar who crashes his bleeding head against 
the cobblestones as he shrieks for alms, another 
who twines the bony footless stump of his leg round 
his neck in order to earn a copper from us. 

Once a door was opened and a dead man, in rags, 


YUNNAN 201 


was thrown into the road. He was picked up by 
two men who rammed him rudely into a sorry 
broken packing-case. ‘They carried the case away 
between them on a pole, the dead man’s toes shew- 
ing through a crack. At an eating-booth the car- 
riers stopped and left the wretched coffin in the 
streaming gutter, with pigs scratching themselves 
against it and cabbage-stalks floating in and out 
of it. 

In every booth all the time there is a great clamor 
of bargaining. Groups stand blocking up the street 
about the trestles on which are stacked rolls of 
cotton strips, Lo-lo ribbons, pale unhealthy-looking 
meat, mats, rough gray-green pottery, bamboo 
brooms, twisted straw firing, cloth shoes for men 
and tiny silk flowery shoes for women, persimmons 
and bananas, straw hats as big as tables, elaborate 
paper kites in the shapes of dragons, butterflies and 
birds. Even the feeble little displays of rusty nails, 
lids of cigarette tins, corks, broken saucers and 
shreds of rag are not neglected by the public. Noise 
is nine points of business in Yunnan and each cash 
is worth half an hour’s irate argument. 

From behind a screened doorway comes the in- 
congruous sound of a harmonium. Two mission- 
aries and probably a couple of converts are opening 
their hearts in song. The tune to which their praise 
_ is set is a London street song with the pace altered 
meen, Eliza, Eliza Jane... ’’ A crowd of 


_ soldiers stands outside, idly revolving the mysteries 


202 THE LITTLE WORLD 


of foreign eccentricity. The clamor of the market 
is martyring the missionaries’ music. 

But I had come to Mengtsz market in the hope 
of seeing ‘‘pirates.”’ Pirates so far inland sound 


; 
| 


{ 
} 


absurdly amphibious, like the stories of eels crossing 
deserts. But in Mengtsz brigands are called 


pirates; it is a peculiarity of the place, just as Bath 
Buns are a peculiarity of Bath. 


Pirates and all naughty men must often reflect 
happily that they give almost as much pleasure in 
the world as pain. They give constant joy to those 
of us who have enough dramatic sense to enable 


us to enjoy the presence of only semi-serious danger. 
How many mild parents at home in Tooting or 


elsewhere have their breakfasts occasionally spoilt | 
by such information from their traveling kin as— 
‘The pirates here have captured six innocent women | 
and children and are holding them for ransom. As 
for me, I have mislaid my revolver but the Lord’s 
or, ‘As I write I can hear on 
the verandah the snarling of a panther hungry for 
blood,” or, ‘In my bath this morning what should 


will be done... ”’ 


” 


I find but a puff adder coiled round the soap .. . 


The possibility of thus electrifying the dear ones 
we have left behind us is what makes globetrotting 


really worth while. 


So I went to Mengtsz market, looking for 
pirates. I understood that pirates, like all other 


harassed providers for censorious households or 
messes, would take advantage of market day. I 


Se Fe ae ee eee 


YUNNAN 205 


thought that I should stand side by side with pirates 
haggling for eggs or feather brooms, as it might 
be at Barker’s during a sale. I intended to write 
to my family with a telling pretence of indifference, 
“The pirates were so tiresome at market this morn- 
ing. They don’t mind how they put prices up. 
Vulgar ostentation isn’t the word. I heard the 
chieftain of the Skull and Crossbones band buying 
chickens for four dollars each and, my dear,—noth- 
ing but skin and bone. He walked away with eight 
skewered on his two-handed sword... ”’ 

There were no pirates in Mengtsz market. But 
they had come through lately in an impressive pro- 
cession, wearing cloaks and big turbans and curious 
old rifles and cartridge belts, riding high on tall 
saddles on their hurrying ponies, with their feet in 
the ponies’ manes. They had come through to the 
sound of deep gongs answering one another all 
down the line. But they did not wait for market 

day. They were, as it happened, earning an honest 
“penny, protecting some favored merchants’ goods 
from other pirates. So they crashed and rattled 
past our gate and crossed the valley in a long 
dwindling line. We felt as if gods had visited us. 


II 


UR valley is speckled with villages. No one 
lives in an isolated cottage in Yunnan, it 
seems; all the peasants’ huts are so huddled and 


206 THE LITTLE WORLD 


cramped together that every villager must be able 
to hear his neighbor eat. A tight wall always binds 
all the compressed mudhouses together. 

Our valley is divided into uplands—on which the 
graves, the memorial pillars and the worn stone 
lions stand as thick as the flowers—and lowlands— 
ricefields under water. But over highland and 
lowland alike, over foothills and mountains and 
marshes, is spread a net of villages; those among 
the rice-marshes are like islands, those among the 
graves like humble mausoleums. From village to 
village the little busy paths run—dyked up between 
the absurd puzzle-sections of the ricefields—worn 
down in the tall flowery grass of the high grave- 
yards. And most of the villages 1 in our valley now 
have the prints of our ponies’ hoofs in the soft earth, 
within their walls. 

There is the village at the crossroads, huddled 
round a great evergreen tree in the shade of which 
carved stone tablets shew who subscribed to the 
construction of the rough cobbled road, and who 
built the high humped bridge that makes so much 
ado about so small a stream. There is the big sad. 
village that is so nearly deserted and bears upon its 
walls ominous white handprints to shew that a 
plague has passed over it. There is Ta-t’oun, the 
disreputable Mussulman village where men do their 
marketing armed with heavy old rifles and beautiful 
daggers with chased silver hilts and sheaths. The 
complexions, the features, and the fierce wide eyes 


YUNNAN 209 


= the villagers bear witness to those invading fore- 
ithers from Turkestan whose religion and tradi- 
‘ons they still uphold. There is Shih-li-p’u, a vil- 
ge of temples. In one of its temples the stair has 
cumbled away, but by climbing the wall we found 
an upper room some restful paintings represent- 
grather overdressed persons on fat piebald horses 
itting one another’s heads off. The optimistic ex- 
ressions of the severed heads while still in mid-air 
‘as a lesson to us all. In another of Shih-li-p’u’s 

mples a nun in a close black-hooded cap and a 
ark tunic and trousers tended a light at Buddha’s 
et and refused to notice our presence. The 
omen and little girls of Shih-li-p’u all wear a cur- 
us Lo-lo head-dress, a pointed cap with a widow’s 
sak down the middle of the forehead and a thick 
savy fringe of little silver fishes, gods, chains, and 
aborate beads hanging all round the cap and al- 
lost obscuring the eyes. 

Ko-chiu is not in our valley but we traveled to it 
ne day. The road, twenty-three miles of it, no- 
srious for brigands, climbed over a high mountain 
ass lined with azaleas. Four Chinese soldiers es- 
orted us. One wore one puttee on his leg to 
1ow that he was a corporal. One sang songs in a 
nall wandering falsetto voice all the way. All 
ere very condescending and kind. Down the steep 
ill came caravans of laden ponies and shouting 
rivers. The leading ponies of each caravan were 
ecorated with colored pennants and with poles 


210 THE LITTLE WORLD 
striped like barbers’ poles crowned with gaudy 
woollen tassels, to act as beacons to the following 
ponies. 

The Chinese inn at Ko-chiu where we stayed— 
since there are no Europeans there—had_ been 
lately dismantled by brigands. It was empty of 
everything except a great deal of wild insect life 
of a kind better imagined than described. | 

The industries of Ko-chiu are brigandage, opium 
growing and tin-mining. The last has the disad. 
vantage of being legitimate. The big tin-mines of 
Ko-chiu are worked on more or less modern 
methods, but the little ones are attractive and 
primitive. A great many humble coolies—whom 
British mining trade unionists would hardly recog. 
nize as men and brothers—sat on their haunches 
shaking little bowls of water and earth; as they 
shook, the red grains of tin detached themselves 
from the brown sediment. Everything seemed 
to be happening at once among the dingy wet 
terraces that were the mines. Men were digging 
channels and dykes between the terraces, men 
—some of them chained prisoners—were jog-trot- 
ting from one centre to another carrying swinging 
kerosene cans at either end of shoulder poles; some 
were wading thigh-deep in brilliant vermilion water, 
some sat in front of shallow tilted slides, whisking 
rainbows of water, with perfect regularity, on to, 
the mud at the top of the slides, so that the grains 
of metal might ooze slowly down the slopes into 


| 


YUNNAN 211 


‘he grooves prepared for them. But the most 
jramatic process was the furnace. 

A tall fire flowered broadly from the top of a 
‘ower of mud. Half-naked men, like demented 
organ-blowers, worked the bellows beside the tower, 
ind the fire gasped harshly in a roaring gaseous 
yoice. At the foot of the tower there was a dwarf 
oor, about twelve inches high, and in front of 
this, but at a distance of about fifteen feet, sat a 
man pushing a long sharp metal rod through the 
joor into the heart of the fire. As he stabbed, the 
molten tin ran down in a thin hesitating stream, 
like a model of a waterfall in hell, through the 
‘ittle door into a pit below. 

_ Allround the furnaces were stacked thick bars of 
sold finished tin, shining and somehow delicious to 
the eye, like silver butterscotch, disclaiming frigidly 
all relationship with the infernal stream that re- 
luctantly ran from the heart of the fire. 

_ The western sun lay among clouds like a gout 
of molten tin as we finished our sightseeing. We 
walked out- through the city gate to see how the 
mountains, plated with gray-green fields of white 
opium flowers, faced the dying of the day. But 
nardly had we set foot among the smokey caves in 
the cliff, lived in by the outcasts and the very poor, 
when soldiers ran after us and hurried us back 
‘nto the city. Even at a few paces from the city 
wall, it seemed, brigands were the rulers. The fur- 
naces of heavenly and human industry might die 


t 


212 THE LITTLE WORLD 


away now for the night, but the brigands’ workin 
shift had begun. 


II 


HE mountains are capricious patron saints fo 

picnickers. Sometimes they smile and sur 
plement with a feast of azaleas and lilies th 
coarser fare of hard-boiled eggs and banana: 
Then again, sometimes they knock down and stam 
with mud and humiliation anyone who dares t 
tickle their ribs with a picnic. 

There was a picnic which up to five o’clock in th 
afternoon had been a fairly successful one. Tru 
it had rained so hard that the road by which w 
had arrived on horseback must be presumed to b 
impassable and we must return by train—still, b 
five o’clock we had dried out and, having reache 
the railway station, imagined the picnic to be prai_ 
tically over. What—no passenger train? Ver 
well then, a goods train. ‘The goods train woul 
be two hours late? Very well then, we can pla 
ring-a-roses till it comes. But rings are tarnishe 
and roses wilted before the goods train come 
And when it comes it can only spare one oily close 
freight truck for nine picnickers, the ponies ¢ 
the riders, one sedan chair containing invalid, fiv 
coolies, several luncheon hampers and a a) 
The very wells grow fainter. 

Still, home must be reached somehow. Flog th 


YUNNAN 213 


yonies into the truck. They are stallions and will 
ight if they can. One pony wriggles off its bridle 
ind is challenging the local ponies to a fight. For 
in agonizing half-hour everyone must pursue the 
srrant pony with one hand and pacify the impatient 
Annamite engine-driver with the other. The pony 
s caught. The shafts of the sedan chair will not 
yo into the truck. Very well then, balance it on the 
soal-tender. We can only just squeeze into the 
Jark truck. A pony is wiping his nose on my hat. 
My new riding breeches are seated in a pool of 
‘rain oil. It is very dark. We sing John Brown’s 
3ody in brave quavering voices as the train jolts on 
n the dark. 

_ Now we must get out; this is the point nearest 
1ome—a little deserted halt halfway up a mountain 
side, only four steep miles from home in the moon- 
ess dark without lanterns. [hud succeeds thud. 
Two of the party have already sprained their 
inkles. Very well then, they must sit and wait till 
lawn. One of the ponies will not proceed—it will 
only kick. We hope it will make a painful dint in 
‘he malevolent mountain. The chair containing the 
nvalid, having, like the rest of us, missed the path, 
ias foundered on a far crag and must wait till dawn. 
Zveryone has lost everyone. Nobody has any 
matches. I am still whole enough to tumble 
idroitly about halfway down to the valley. But 
. come to an edge which leaves my groping feet 


214 THE LITTLE WORLD 


guessing in the air. I settle down and confuse 
everyone within hearing by shouting contradictory, 
advice. There is a splashing sound at the foot of 
my precipice. One of the party is sliding in a sitting 
position down a mountain torrent, using his re. 
luctant pony as a brake, ingeniously arguing that a 
stream must eventually reach a valley. He is right. 
A wail of triumph announces his arrival at the 
thieves’ village at the foot of the mountain. | 

A check. Yunnanese thieves, it seems, do not 
deal in lanterns or even candles. They simply go 
to bed when it is too dark to pursue their calling. 
They are, however, like all thieves worthy of the 
name, resourceful fellows when awake. Presently 
we on the mountain side can see half a dozen kind 
thieves running across the distant dark with lighted 
twists of straw. They have bundles of straw on 
their backs and neatly light one twist from another 
as it dies. 

So we have all been found. We have escaped 
the mountain; we are at last on a flat trail faced 
homeward, albeit ankle-deep in water, for the val- 
ley 1 is flooded. ‘The mountain is left licking its 4 
in the dark. 

I speak from experience when I say that any 
mountain, however poetic and even kittenish in ap- 
pearance, can be devilish if you get it in the wrong! 
mood. Mountains are like wild animals in captiv-| 
ity. Once they realize their power, they use ity, 
once they have tasted the blood of human pic 


YUNNAN 215 


_nickers, there is nothing for it but to buckle a stout 
railway or funicular round their necks and never 
let them go again. 
_ There was a mountain that seemed so tame that a 
, child could have subdued it with a look. It had a 
_perfectly good trail all the way to the ravine between 
its peaks, a comfortable temple where picnickers 
could spend the night, pretty apricot and pome- 
granate orchards, friendly farms, and a brigand 
village which was credibly reported to have been 
_ evacuated. ie 
_ We started one evening and spent the night in 
the temple. The temple was built against the face 
(of a craggy mossy cliff and at its foot Buddha sat 
in a long dark cave, scarcely to be seen. To him, 
_all night, sang a rather ill-timed worshiper. 

We started early next morning and without ad- 
venture reached the ravine. In a crack in the earth 
down which the path dived to the gorge, was a man 
-on a pony. We drew aside to let him pass but, 
instead of passing, he rode hastily back into the 
jravine. We had followed him a little way before 
it occurred to us that his presence and behavior 
suggested that the brigands had not after all evacu- 
ated their village. Perhaps the mountain had a 
posse of brigands up its sleeve. 

_ As we decided to turn back the skies opened to 
‘emit a positive yell of rain. The whole mountain 
side became a river. Nobody could be more anxious 
to go home than we at once became. But the moun- 


216 THE LITTLE WORLD 


tain’s blood was up. We had come without consult-. 
ing it; we should go at its pleasure. It tore its paths 
to pieces in a frantic effort to hinder our retreat. 
Rain wrapped us round; waterfalls roared between 

our knees. ‘The ponies proceeded in the attitude: 
of newborn puppies—stomachs on the slippery mud, 
they slid with all four sprawling legs out, as though 
they were swimming. We could not ride, we could 
only with difficulty keep our own feet. | 

It was hours before we reached the village where 
we had spent the night. 

But the mountain had not done with us yet. It 
had arranged that we should meet a caravan of 
pack-ponies under insufficient control. Our Cyclops, 
the dapple-gray, tore himself free and, stripping 
himself to the waist—(kicking off his saddle and 
breaking his girth)—-challenged all comers. They 
fought on the churned mud in which were the 
holsters that had carried our provisions. Our red 
wine and hard-boiled eggs became a sorry souffle. 
The men of the village and the caravan men would 
not help or intervene in the battle; they were true 
men of their vindictive mountain; they only smiled 
on the fortunate. With the caravan men exhorting. 
us to restrain our aggressive ponies, we dangled 
like helpless bobbins on the reins of the large and 
leaping Cyclops. We pacified him at last. He was 
completely naked except for a thick coat of mud. 
The vanquished caravan ponies stood in a jingling 
bruised group at a safe distance, reproaching one an- 


YUNNAN 217 
other for not having put up a better fight. And we 


- had our revenge—a revenge perhaps too subtle for 
the crude understanding of an angry mountain. S. 
. turned to a row of mountain men and, removing sev- 


— 


eral of their hats with a restrained gesture, threw 


' the hats in the stream. The little red buttons acted 
_as keels and the hats made a very seaworthy exit. 


— 


We left the village without a word, leaving the vil- 


lagers, perhaps, imagining that they had assisted at 
some British sacrificial rite. The hat removal was 
our only reproach to the mountain—a retort, I 


_ maintain, not without a quiet dignity of its own. 


IV 


HE four women missionaries and I sat looking 
at the splendid cake, shaped like a cathedral, 


_ that was our bond of union. Our hostess, in a broad 


_ Western American voice, talked without ceasing 
_ about her seven children, their clothes, their ail- 
ments, their naughtiness, the dilatoriness of the 
. Chinese tailor who wasn’t through with Warren’s 
_ second pair of: cacky pants yet ... “See this li'l 


nv 


aad 


piece of creetonne,”’ she said, “I figured I could make 
meself a cute little jumper outa that...’ She 
held the gay little remnant against her wide breast; 
her figure was the tired figure of a woman who has 
built a proud barrier of seven children between her- 
self and the sphere of cute little jumpers. 


218 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Floating and spinning altogether down this stream — 
of talk, the four missionaries and I must make efforts _ 
to send up signals one to another, if we did not — 


wish to pass in complete oblivion. One of the mis- 
sionaries was by no means tongue-tied, indeed she 


would probably be described by those who loved | 


her as ‘‘a perfect scream” or at least ‘‘a truly joyous 
Christian.’ She seemed to watch archly for errors 


in her own speech, as a proofreader watches for | 


misprints, but much more hilariously. ‘There now, 
listen to me... chugar instead of sugar... 
chugar in me chea . . . well now, I'll be saying me 


own name wrong next . . . Ow gurls, don’t look | 
at me in that tone of voice, I’ve got the giggles bad | 


9 


enough already . . Our hostess, under cover 


of her joyous guest’s solo merriment, said in — 


hoarse parenthesis, ‘“‘Such a bright gurl, she keeps us 
lafiing all day, but she ha’n’t got the depth nor yet 
the classy eddication of the other gurls.”” Aloud she 
added, ‘“There now, mebbe you think you gotta 
notion what a chore I have to keep these bad gurls 
in order . . . Reg’lar madcaps, my husband calls 
them...” The other three missionaries, though 
doubtless gratified by the high spirits of their merry 
yet perfectly refined fellow worker in the vineyard, 
did not laugh and scarcely spoke at all. They sat 
with bent heads and tight self-conscious smiles. 

One seemed to be the skeleton of a ghost that 
surely had never been a woman. Her leaden eyes 


were set in a quite fleshless face; no hair was to be | 


if fioncays was left together in the one place,’ 


| 


YUNNAN 219 


seen under the crushed rag of a hat that drooped 
‘upon her head. She did not speak at all from first 
to last. 


One was an engaged young lady, as we were sev- 


eral times archly told by our hostess. “Her fioncay 
_ (this was another aside) is a gentleman missionary 


) 


-beneath her in rank—but when a gurl fixes her 


99 
. 


heart . Members of this mission are not 
allowed to be in the same station after they are 


engaged. Every young man missionary knows that 
the acceptance of his proposal of marriage is the 
signal for his own instant removal to a distant part 


of China. ‘“It’d be a bad example for the Chinese 


b) 


said 


- our hostess, and one trembled to think what she 
could mean. Our engaged young lady had a sad 


mean little face. She told us little anecdotes about 


babies, how a missionary child in Canton could re- 
- cite sacred poems in three dialects, how another, at 


— oo 


=== 


nine months old, repeated Halleluia after its de- 
lighted father. I looked at her suffocated and 
pathetic face and imagined her suddenly as she was, 
perhaps, when she left her English home, Roselea— 


or was it Elmhurst ?—-safe in its uniform row, and 
_ banished herself triumphantly to a continent where 


no two roofs cut the sky at the same curve, where 
gods and men and dragons jostle each other in pagan 
temples, and where the only god who holds him- 
self aloof is the god of Roselea or Elmhurst. Had 
she sipped a filtered dilution of the strong wine of 


220 THE LITTLE WORLD 


adventure? Had she seen a light and heard a voice? 
Was the voice really that of lost souls—did the light 
really shine from the gate of heaven? At any rate 
she had forsaken everything and followed—and 
now she was to be rewarded, she was to marry 
a gentleman missionary and her babies would cry 
Halleluia. . . 

“Ai don’t know Ai’m sure .. . Ai don’t know 
Ai’m sure . . .” the fourth young woman replied to 
all questions on the subject of the disturbed and 
fascinating province in which she had lived for years, 
She was a young woman of a heavy rustic prettiness; 
her shiny sulky face was pink and she had made as 
little as possible of her sand-colored hair. She! 
shared a bungalow with one other woman missionary 
in a town in which no other foreigners were found. 
‘‘Ai have to be cerried four days on the becks of 
men to get there,” she said, and this curious way of 
referring to the common sedan chair might have 
interested a psychoanalyst. ‘Nao, its not a pretty 
taown, its all full of heathen temples . . . Nao, 
Ai’m not partial to the Chainese, Ai laiked being in 
India, Ai could make friends there—Ao nao—not 
with the Indians, we taught the Indians the Word. 
. . . Ai mean with the English lady and gentleman 


workers . . . Ai think Chaina’s very dull . . . In- 
terests in Chaina? . . . Well, Ai don’t know Ai’m | 
sure . . . Ai’m partial to me garden in K - 


} 


Ai don’t know if it’s a good soil for flaowers . .. 
Ai only grow vegetables. . . .” a 


YUNNAN 221 


She mumbled in a flat voice that could scarcely be 
heard in the clatter of our hostess’ information. 

“Them cacky pants of Warren’s,’”’ shouted our 
hostess for the fifth time, ‘‘the tailor’s hadum for 
six months . . . It gets me so rattled I lie awake 
nights thinking mebbe he’s stolen the stuff... 
mebbe he’s been robbed . . . It was good cacky 
drill and I paid i 

A miracle happened. The Chinese tailor, with a 
pair of khaki trousers over his arm, stood in the 
window. 

“Now see here, tailor, I gotta a good mind not to 
pay you a cent for them pants . . . You had me so 
rattled I lay awake o’ nights thinking perhaps . . .” 

The pagan tailor walked into the den of Chris- 
tians. It is not to be supposed that he knew that 
four out of six of us had come many thousand miles 
to bring light to him and his four hundred million 
compatriots. Yet he turned his serene broad humor- 
ous face slowly and surveyed us with courteous 
attention. His eye paused for a few seconds, with 
a faint look of polite surprise, on the skull-like face 
of the skeleton missionary, and perhaps he thought, 
with ruthless Chinese common sense, ‘‘She is mad 
because she has no man.”’ Behind his upright figure 
in its seagreen robe, as he stood in the window, 
bristled and curled the incorrigible roofs of his 
pagan city, and, behind the roofs again, the red 
mountains boiled up into a quivering steaming sky. 
If we had risen there and then and one by one 


222 THE LITTLE WORLD 


preached him the best sermons we knew, he could 
never have answered us. For we should have been 
deaf to answers, we who are deaf to the hoarse 
temple bells and the fading flutes of the wandering 
beggar-musicians and the sound of the leaping wind 
coming over the mountains. 


V 


N the edge of the lake, looking across to the 

old glittering three-storeyed pagoda, there isa 

new pagoda today. It was built as the sun rose over 
the mountains this morning, and it will never see the 


sunset. It stands—bravely enough, seeing that it 


is made of mud and has no future—in the shape of 
a tower about seven feet high; it has a door by which 
the smaller stray pigs can enter inquisitively while 
the architect is putting the finishing touches to the 
coping. But no pig, unless he wishes to be known in 
future as pork, must stay in the tower after ten 
o’clock, for the tower is built for an opium burning. 


Opium, in spite of laws and Leagues of Nations, | 


remains one of the ruling factors in Yunnanese life 


and politics. Officially opium is not known, not 


grown, not bought, not sold, not smoked. Yet some-— 


how, in the spring, big white poppies flower en- 
throned on terraces of gray leaves on the mountain 
sides. And somehow nearly every Chinese peasant 
in Yunnan has something of the opium look in his 


Bea. 


YUNNAN 223 


eyes; opium has puffed out the pouches of his eyes 
and stretched the stained skin tightly over his face- 
bones; opium has shewn him an escape from poverty 
and work; opium has taught him that sleepy gentle- 
ness that comes of not caring. And somehow at the 
Customs stations on all frontiers, opium, innocently 
labelled as shoes or ships or sealing-wax, falls into 
the hands of perspicacious customs men. 
_ Every few months, seized opium is publicly burned 
in the presence of European officials of the Chinese 
Customs, Chinese Government officials trying to look 
as if they didn’t know what the stuff was, and the 
surprised, but not much disturbed, populace. There 
is more opium in the ground than ever came out of 
it, thinks the populace, and, at any rate, the sight 
of thousands of dollars worth of treasure going up 
in smoke is always worth looking at. 

Hence the little new tower on the edge of the lake. 

It is a real stronghold now, for soldiers have 
come to guard it. The soldiers are dressed in 
shrunken gray cotton, red-banded caps worn at dif- 
ferent slovenly angles, perforated black cotton stock- 
ings, and dark blue cloth slippers. They stack their 
rifles and at once sink into the wicker chairs that 
fave been brought out for the use of the distin- 
guished officials. From these chairs they do not 
‘ise even when the distinguished officials arrive. 
The Chinese soldier does not as a rule remember 
that he is a soldier unless he wants to shoot some- 
one with his gun. 


224 THE LITTLE WORLD 


So the tower is not very splendidly guarded. 

However, the tripods of rifles bristling round it 
make it a centre of interest, not only to the pigs, the 
calm buffaloes, and the mangey stray ponies, but also 
to a score of citizens and a few little spangled, kilted 
P’u-la women. Babies in embroidered knapsacks 
lean over their mothers’ shoulders to see the great 
sight. The Chinese magistrate arrives, dressed in 
a brown wideawake hat, a gray satin robe and, over 
the robe, a black brocade Eton coat. He has a sad 
puffy face, and a long moustache fits into the creases 
of his cheeks. His beard grows like a tassel from 
one point in the middle of his chin; he combs it with 
immensely long dirty fingernails. He does not seem 
surprised to find his guard sprawling over alf the 
chairs; there is no room for him to sit down, but he 
is content to stand, thinking, apparently, “Soldiers 
will be soldiers.” The officer of the guard has tc 
stand too—a fat round-shouldered man in bright 
mustard-color with dazzling yellow boots. 

A representative of the Tao-yin, or Chinese dis 
trict governor, arrives. The English Commissionei — 
of Chinese Customs is here. The show begins. 

The opium is brought out in two trunks. It is ir 
several forms. There are a great many little bottle 
of medicine condemned by authority as containinj — 
an illegal proportion of the drug. There is prepare i 
opium like black treacle in thick green pots, ray 
opium like coarse plug tobacco, almost imperceptibl) — 
opium carefully mixed with disguising mud. Every 


YUNNAN 225 


thing is exhibited to all the officials and one can 
almost hear the conjuror’s voice—‘Look them well 
‘over, gentlemen, no deception whatever .. . ” 

| There is a glassy dazzle of heat, like a halo, over 
‘the doomed mud tower now, and as parcels of 
‘opium, soaked in kerosene, are dropped over the 
‘turret keep, the fire declares itself in a great crack- 
‘ling clamor within. Flames leap over the battle- 
‘ments. All the babies wail, all the little boys cheer, 
all the adults say, ‘‘Ooo-000,” all the little pigs re- 
treat hurriedly to their mothers in order to draw 
‘nourishment that may sustain them through such 
‘a startling experience. The blaze grows higher and 
‘higher as it devours all that is given to it. The fire 
is coiled against the sky like a snake poised to strike. 
‘The smoke drifts away over the lotuses on the lake 
and makes a smudge across the mountains. There 
is a heavy smell on the air. The mud of which the 
‘tower is built begins to crack, and through the cracks 
come small spurts of smoke, puffed out in simultane- 
‘ous gasps in all directions, as if the goblin guardians 
of the tower were shooting impotently through their 
loopholes. 

_ The cremated remains of the sacrifice can at last be 
seen oozing through the little door of the tower. 
Fire cannot utterly destroy the value of opium— 
even the burnt remains must be demolished. Not 
: the corpse of a pill must survive to mock authority. 
So presently, when the heat of the fire dies away, 
the tower must be utterly destroyed, the ground 


] 


226 THE LITTLE WORLD | 


scraped, the memory of it shorn from sight and mind. 
—as Babylon was shorn away. The smallest frag. 
ments of the tower must be thrown into the lake to 
fertilize the tall green reeds and the lotuses, to en. 
rich the mud in which the buffaloes wallow. | 
Nothing will remain of the mud tower; noth- 
ing will remain to represent thousands of lost 
dollars. A fortune, a secret treasure has gone in 
smoke across the mountains, a burnt offering to the 
League of Nations. There is more treasure in the : 
air than will ever come out of it. i 
The show, at any rate, is over. The peasants go. 
back to their little dark houses, to their precarious 
idleness and their consoling opium pipes. 
Nothing is so sad as remembering broken thing 
Few tragedies in life are so shocking as the inevitable 
bursting of the green balloon bought at the gate of 
Kensington Gardens. Breakages are first introduc. 
tion to hopeless tragedy and can never fail of their 
terrible effect. A lost possession might always re- 
turn; a lost thing can be remembered and dreamed 
of in all its glorious completeness, but a broken thing 
is an idol dead; even in dreams it can never be 
glorious again. | 
This feeling is on the wind that has blown my 
little doomed treasure-tower away in dust, it hurtt 
me every time I see the shell of a burnt house, the 
old wreck of a ship, a tree torn in pieces by a gale, 
the tiny disordered body of a bird. I insist that 
things do what they were born or built to do—the 


YUNNAN 227 


treasure in my tower was not hoarded for the amuse- 
ment of pigs and the despoiling of goblins; it was 
a real treasure—and now it is dust. A villa may 
be more beautiful with fire looking out of its win- 
dows than with Nottingham lace curtains and an 
laspidistra—yet it is as terrible as a ghost. 

I saw a broken train lately for the first time. It 
was not much of a train—the humblest goods porter 
on Paddington Station would have laughed it to 
scorn—still, it was meant to run sanely, right side 
up, on wheels, from mountain to mountain and in 
‘and out of valleys the like of which the haughty 
trains of the Great Western will never see. And 
when I saw it its wheels were to the sky, it had been 
ithrown away like a broken toy. 

Early in the morning a tall cauliflower of smoke 
‘on a distant hillside attracted Mengtsz’s attention. 
‘A telescope showed the train’s tragedy; swathed in 
‘smoke and in flame the poor thing lay upside down 
‘in its last humiliation, like a row of cracked 
‘nutshells. 

_ Four of us rode across the valley and up the 
bouldery mountain side. The poor train, a freighter, 
carrying coal and kerosene and carbide, looked inex- 
‘pressibly humbled. There are few things prouder 
than an engine coming into a station—even a Tonkin 
‘engine, picking its way among the listless pigs into 
‘a jungle-buried wayside halt, has pride and a cer- 
‘tain glory. Its breast is puffed out like a turkey’s, 
‘its funnel is stiffly upreared under a knightly plume 


228 THE LITTLE WORLD 


of smoke. But here was no plume of smoke—only 
a smothering shroud of smoke for a smashed thing, 
only a dead Don Quixote who would defy the great! 
world no more. None but ridiculous similes would 
fit that engine now—a smashed egg—an over-ripe 
gooseberry—a penny toy with the paint licked off 
and the spring broken. | 

The trucks which had followed the engine to 
disaster lay behind it in various degrees of extrava-| 
gant disarray. ‘Trucks, of course, never have any: 
dignity. Watch them at their best, being shunted in’ 
and out of a station, starting to a servile attention 
as the engine draws breath, passing the word down 
—clank-clank-clank—as the engine gives the com-| 
mand to slacken speed ...In the mechanical 
world they can only fill the place of cringing sheep, 
hanging on the whims of a panting arrogant sheep-| 
dog. Now they were martyrs to their silly docility 
but equal at last to their tyrant—thrown about, 
splintered, gutted, vomiting, squeezed into fantastic 
accordion pleats, balanced hysterically on their 
buffers—they were surely the extreme examples of 
the squalor and indignity of broken things. 

The flames roared proud and erect, and all the 
kerosene tins, red-hot, glowed beautifully, breathing 
with the breeze. The crew of the train, Annamites’ 
and Chinese, were nearly all hurt, though no one 
was killed. The wounded lay patiently waiting for 
help, looking through the cloud of smoke at the sky. 


They were so still and feeble that they seemed like j 


YUNNAN 229 


bits of the broken train—a few extra splinters flung 
_ from the disaster. 

Just now in Yunnan one other kind of broken 
| thing is constantly before one’s eyes. 

All the spring and summer the egrets haunt these 
valleys; they swing clumsily on the thin topmost 
branches of the eucalyptus trees or plane above the 
‘lakes and the flooded ricefields in search of fish. 
But now is their nesting season and now the poor 
mother-birds are cursed with fine feathers. So every- 
one’s hand is against them; they are not birds now, 
(not winged flesh and blood—just flying money. 
They are caught and torn and thrown away, broken 
'but not dead, on the grass. No money in them after 
(that, poor things, they are just white débris under- 
‘foot, their green legs sprawling and absurd, their 
‘round eyes clipped like pince-nez on the bridges of 
‘their long beaks. The feather, the only thing that 
‘commended them to human attention, is taken away 
‘from them, what does it matter that life is taken 
itoo? The baby egrets, left orphaned in the eucalyp- 
(tus trees, fall down forlornly out of the cold nests, 
‘but nobody notices them—there is no money in 
‘them. 

I founded an egret orphanage. Henry, Lindsay, 
Travers, Irene, Bildad, Edith, Osbert, and Sach- 
-everell—all owe their lives to me. Egberd, Egbreda 
and Egintruda died. ‘They staggered on their long 
green legs, they could only be roused to open their 
‘long beaks for raw fish when artificially stimulated. 


230 THE LITTLE WORLD 


For a week everything smelt of raw fish and brandy. — 
The world seemed to hang on the survival of 
Egberd, Egbreda and Egintruda. But one by one — 


they died. Their transparent eyelids closed over 


their round astonished eyes but did not hide them. — 


Their beaks were half open, perhaps in a last vision 
of raw fish and brandy. The ants ran up their limp 
legs. They looked more like broken toys than ever, 


like marionettes whose showman had forgotten | 


them. 
But their mothers’ feathers were on the way to 
Paris. 


VI 


HE Annamites, an obsequious people, have — 


changed their Dragon Day to make it coincide - 
with the French Fourteenth of July. ‘The dragon, | 
who destroyed himself by eating fire, and the mob, — 
which established itself by storming the Bastille, are 


curious co-patrons for one innocent July day. 
There was a banquet in Mengtsz on the Four- 


teenth of July, attended by about forty patriotic — 
French citizens and three English neighbors trying — 


to wear as Hats-Offish an expression as possible. 


The banquet was nearly two hours late in coming | 
forward, and the dryness engendered in the air by — 


forty-three uncocktailed throats was so powerful — 
that it deranged Mengtsz’s electric system and all 
the lights went out. The Annamite dragon thus — 


YUNNAN 231 


came into his own; he swallowed the twinkling 
Western world, he conquered the Bastille for an 
hour. 

From their dark thirsty balcony the waiting feast- 
ers could see the dragon coming through the seething 
streets of the Annamite quarters in a snaky proces- 
sion of delicate gay shapes of light. Dancing on 
poles in single file over the heads of the crowd came 
the lanterns—luminous swans and horses and fishes 
and pheasants and prawns and goblins and little 
fairy turrets. Faery and fiery they came and nodded 
in a row looking at the balcony. A ring having been 
cleared in the crowd by the crude method of throw- 
ing lighted firecrackers at the bare feet of the ob- 
structing Chinese, two masked men entered it and 
fought. They scarcely touched each other, yet one 
could well see that their performance was a fight. 
It was more than a fight, it was a maneuvring of 
armies. I am sure it looked much more like a fight 
than ever did any of Mr. Dempsey’s affairs. Those 
must be mere beetle-crushing, but this was fought by 
light crouched tense men, dancing ritually like in- 
spired leopards. Every time they closed, a quick 
light somersault or a graceful set-piece resulted, a 
method which I am sure is not followed by Mr. 
Dempsey. If Anna Pavlova did not look quite so 
like a fairy she could dance an Annamite fight. All 
round the fight shuffled two little men continuously; 
they wore enormous pale smirking masks. Wob- 
bling, spinning, grinning through eighteen-inch 


232 THE LITTLE WORLD 


mouths, they looked like infernal village idiots and | 


very much detracted from the heroic effect of the 
battle. 


The dragon entered the ring rampantly in the | 
middle of the fight. It did not wait for its cue— — 


history teaches us that dragons seldom do. Behind 
the business end of the dragon hurried its tail—a 
role which, I am proud to say, was nobly sustained 


by my Annamite cook. The dragon’s tail is one of — 
those subtle yet not spectacular roles that are found | 
in every cast. It is a humble part and success in it | 
is rarely appreciated by the public—yet without it 


the whole drama would literally fall to the ground. 


It is—like all such parts—a difficult one to play. | 
The tail, obviously, must follow the lead of the 
head, but this is no simple matter if the eyes of the — 
tail are entunnelled in ten yards of scarlet cotton—_ 
the texture of the dragon’s body. I could see the - 
coat-tails of my cook, trembling a little with nerv- 
ousness, supporting the tail, but this effect was of | 


course not intended. 
To the head falls most of the spectacular work, 


and the role requires an athlete. The actor not 
only has to carry an immense head the size of a 


small dining-table, frothing with tassels, beads, pom: 
poms, wands, wool-mats, feather-brooms, and other 


superstructures, but he has also to leap incessantly — 


to a great height, while anchored to the earth by his 
less nimble tail, and tread out all the flames thrown 
to him by the spectators. The fire-eating habits of 


YUNNAN 233 


the dragon form the plot of the whole ballet. 
People throw him spitting firecrackers, wire balls 
with blazing wool inside, impromptu torches of all 
kinds and even common lighted matches. All these 
the dragon must dispose of by raking them in under 
his curly teeth and curly beard. So strong is his 
craving for fire that he actually climbs a pole— 
standing on the spine of his faithful tail—and bites 
off a little flame that wriggles deliciously at the top. 

It would be fun fishing for dragons, swinging a 
succulent flame against the stars on a bent pin. 

It becomes apparent that our dragon has over- 
eaten himself. He writhes, he rears, he makes 
rushes at the shrieking spectators, he bumps his 
chin on the ground and rears and writhes again. 
Even his tail realizes that a crisis is at hand, and 
wags and writhes as best it may. Finally after two 
swoons, followed by terrific recrudescences of dying 
energy, the dragon dies. His lifeless beard is tan- 
gled with his teeth and his eyelashes among the 
extinguished crackers in the mud. The tail, after a 
moment of unpremeditated pas-seul, realizes the 
situation and dies too. 

Behind the dead dragon, over the dark lake, 
rise the French rockets. How he would have loved 
to eat rockets! Perhaps he is eating them now in 
the dragon’s paradise. But on earth he would never 
have dared. He was an Annamite dragon, and these 
are indigestible imperial French rockets, sent up to 
tell the gods about democracy triumphant—a thing 


234 THE LITTLE WORLD 


our poor dragon knew nothing about. Alas for a | 
timid fire-eater—a gourmand of weak digestion— | 
his toothy tasselled mouth would have watered, but | 
he would never have dared... 

Anyway he is dead now; the lights are on again. - 
We must drink now, not to dragons but to 
democracy. 


Vil 


SI-SHAN lies across the lake from Yunnanfu, | 

and the lake, like a large silver suburb of | 
Greater Yunnanfu, lies an hour’s chair-ride away 
from the Chinese Mayfair where we stay. Fora 
whole hour we jigged through the seething streets. | 
Little unfinished stories caught my eye—the re-: 
proachful look of a silversmith who, engaged in 
some intricate small work, was persistently inter- 
rupted by his hen which would fly on the counter of 
his booth and poke its beak into the matter in hand 
. a donkey with the tassel of its tail caught fast 

in a thornbush so that the tail could only wag at 
the root, as it were, to the perplexity of the donkey 
—which so much amused my chairmen that they 
almost dropped the chair . .. a tribeswoman in 
purple hood, green tunic and pink trousers, enquir-. 
ing from a merchant the use of patent sock-sus- 
penders . . . an old Taoist priest blinking at an. 
acroplane ha | 
The canal, beside which our path lay, was choked 


YUNNAN 238 


_ with sampans and shrill with the curses of lady 
bargees. Each sampan seemed to be sinking beneath 
a heaped load of salt-blocks, babies, cats, pigs, bas- 
kets, cabbages, sacks and straw hats. The female 
captain of each craft, perched on a mountain of such 
miscellanies, her strong brown toes gripping the in- 
secure heaving foothold, punted the boat from one 
collision to another and only stopped swearing in 
order to spit into a neighbor’s cockpit. 

But our two boats, at the lake end of the canal, 
floated among the rabble like boats of the serene 
gods. One had a little green wooden house on it 
and this was for our personal transport. The 
other, which was to carry our servants and our 
escort of seven soldiers, was an ordinary sampan 
already heaped with camping kit, cocktail shakers, 
crockery and other luxuries. Commanding positions 
on the heap seemed always to be reserved for 
the more intimate, and usually private, domestic 
contrivances. 

We entered our boat between two black and gold 
extracts from classical literature which were painted 
on the doorposts. ‘Mountains come into the mir- 
ror,’ said one, and the other added, ‘‘There is one 
song in the air.”’ Both were true. The great striped 
cliffs of Hsi-shan leaned further and further over us 
to seek their enormous reflections in the lake, and 
for two hours no sound but that of our own voices 
interrupted the small tuneful clapping of water 
against our boat’s oars and sides. 


236 THE LITTLE WORLD 


A pavilion with a broad curved tiled roof ran out 
like a peninsula from the garden of the house in 


which we were to stay. It was a Chinese house, | 


lent us by a Chinese business man, and it was built 


at the very foot of the great cliffs of Hsi-shan. Its 


garden stepped down by means of terraces into the 
lake; the lowest terrace was flooded, and swimmers 
could swim there under old trees and over drowned 
flowers. The branches of a big pine tree swept the 
roof of the house and on that roof three little 
squirrels played all day long. Almost all day we 
sat in our pavilion with calm lapping water on three 


sides of us. Incredibly high, on the face of the great 


precipice, behind the house, the little temples of 
Hsi-shan clung like butterflies on a sunny wall. 


At sunset we were rowed over deep rose-pink — 
water to the door of a ruined temple. Our boatman — 


shouted at the door, ‘‘Er-ko-o-0, Er-ko-o-0 .. .” 
(Second Brother, Second Brother) again and again, 


a thin shrill cry ending in a sort of wail. For along — 


time Second Brother made no reply—only brigands, 


he must have argued, would trouble to row to his 


desert island. But our boatman would not be dis- 
couraged. ‘‘Wait, he is there, he is there . 7 
Er-ko-o-0, Er-ko-o-o . . .”’ Second Brother opened 
the door; he was heavy with distrust and sleep; he 
was an old dirty man with a thin beard and drawn 
pouched eyes. A terribly thin dog and a cat to 
match rushed to meet us hoping we meant food. 
There was nothing in the temple, nothing but ruins, 


YUNNAN 237 


dirt and a broken god, no reason to have disturbed 
the old man’s sleep. Second Brother at the water’s 
edge watched us float away; he bowed a little cynical 
bow and turned back to his opium and his solitude. 

Early next day we started on the climb to the 
high cliff temples. I had recently broken a rib so 
I was carried up in a mountain sling. This simple 
contrivance was made by draping a blanket across 
slack cords between two stout bamboos. I lay as 
if in a short hammock, with my unsupported head 
and feet wagging to the rhythm of my bearers’ 
march. When the steps were very steep I almost 
stood on my head. 

There is a steep sloped wood at the foot of 
the precipice, a wood not too thick to let the sunlight 
in and to let the grass and flowers grow. Through 
this wood the path climbs calmly, only occasionally 
breaking out into a fever of steep broken stone 
steps. Loosely strung along the holy path there are 
shrines and temples. The temples are all different, 
but all alike in having stone-balustraded terraces 
with great bronze or stone lanterns in the middle, 
and painted pillars, and dogs fascinated yet dis- 
trustful, and kind square-hatted priests anxious to 
serve tea to travelers, and a wide sight of the sunny 
lake and of mountains miles away. 

But presently we surmounted the roots of the 
precipice and climbed continually up cornered steps 
hewn in the cliff’s surface. “Temples availed them- 
selves of shallow caves here; Buddha looked out 


238 THE LITTLE WORLD 


between ferns and the dripping mosses of little © 
springs; the buildings of man were clamped hope- | 
fully on to great ridges and boulders; little archways 
with shrugged shoulders sprang from rock to rock. | 
Looking down, one could see treetops; looking out, | 
one could see cloudy space; looking up, it seemed © 
that the eaves of the highest shrines—still far above | 
us—were pressed hard against the metallic blue sky | 
and might break off at any moment and carry us — 
down with their fall—straight down through the | 
soft feathers of the pines to disturb the squirrels on _ 
the roof of our night’s shelter and at last to make | 
big rings in the still pale surface of the lake. | 

The topmost temples of Hsi-shan are corded to- | 
gether as human mountaineers are. The cord that — 
binds them together is a stone passage grooved in | 
the cliff’s face, a shallow gallery, an elongated stone — 
cage. Here even I, who had arrived so near the — 
sky without stepping out of my mountain chair, must — 
walk on my own feet, with cautiously bent head, — 
along the low stone passage. | 

The highest shrine of all is really nothing more — 
than a balcony—a fairy balcony leaning out of a 
huge stone cloud. ‘There was only room there for 
us and our seven soldiers all kneeling on a semi- | 
circular stone seat looking down at the world. The — 
great lake seemed full of clouds and of color—the 
various colors of its floor. There was a cloud of © 
milky green and a cloud of dull gold and a cloud of 
peacock blue and a white cloud—and through these — 


YUNNAN 239 


clouds of color in the water ran a kind of mild still 
lightning—scrawls and markings in white on the 
floor of the lake. We could see an island that had 
been drowned by the floods; its neat square rice- 
fields, shimmering through the water, grew cresses 
and lakeweeds now and had forgotten the print of 
man and beast and plough. The little boats ran 
about on their oars as water-beetles run. They vis- 
ited villages among shoreside trees that were to us 
like clusters of brown moths among mosses. ‘The 
high far mountains reached hardly, as it seemed, to 
our knees. They were gashed red behind blue air. 
There was nothing to comfort our dizzy eyes in all 
this immense remoteness, nothing nearer for our 
eyes to seize on than mountains removed from us 
by miles and a tree-tufted lake-shore removed from 
us by fifteen hundred feet. Even Buddha, to whom, 
after a while, we turned, had fright in his golden 
face, although he was safe in his grotto, safe be- 
hind thin blue bars of joss-smoke. Behind him 
characters were carven, “In this place, even a whis- 
per can reach God” . . . Yes, but in such a place it 
seemed as though in earth rather than heaven 
prayers should be answered. NHeaven was so near 
as to be negligible . . . We could almost see the 
texture of the thick round white clouds that bounded 
over the brim of the precipice directly above us. 
It was true . . . even a breath, we felt, could have 
changed their course. 

And so we waited holding our breath, turning 


240 THE LITTLE WORLD | 
from Buddha to the world and back again. The , 


silence was only broken by the remark of a Chinese , 
soldier who was not shy about what he said—in the - 
Divine Ear. He spoke of my husband to his . 
neighbor. ‘He has sat in a puddle,” said the soldier — 
rather sadly, ‘“‘so his bottom is wet .. .” | 

Whiskies and sodas were'no blasphemy after this. - 
Into a worn stone basin on Buddha’s right hand 
trickled a little spring. In this ice-cold water we | 
put our own refreshing bottles to cool before we , 
drank. And we presently filed down along the low | 
tilted galleries towards more human levels. The. 
soldiers talked to my husband as we all stumbled | 
down the steps. The puddle seemed to have made | 
a bond. ‘They said they were paid four and a. 
half Yunnan dollars a month—the equivalent of — 
one dollar fifty, gold—and out of this they had to , 
buy their own rice. But they seemed hearty young 
men and, though they carried but one cartridge belt 
between the seven of them, they swung their rifles . 
robustly within a few inches of our following noses | 
and could no doubt have said something quite | 
nasty to any band of brigands that might chal-. 
lenge us. | 

We walked down to the level where grass and 
trees took the place of stone, and thence we climbed 
again—TI in my sling—to the spine of a rolling ridge - 
that skirted the lake. The ridge was plumed with 
pine trees, clothed in grass and jewelled with flowers. 
I wish I knew the names of more flowers. There 


YUNNAN 241 


- were, I remember, larkspurs of that thick vivid 

_ gentian blue that seems to be reserved for moun- 

tain flowers; there were hooded orchids—crimson 

_and purple—big white marguerites, little mauve or 

yellow michaelmas daisies and a large starry flower 
in clear harebell blue which, when in bud, folded 
roundly like a tiny paper lantern. 

We passed more temples, big broad luxurious tem- 
| ples now, that pillowed themselves on grass rather 
\ than rock and mixed their shadows with those of 
‘bamboo groves. There were dark dahlias in their 

gardens and the red roses on a veteran rose tree 
‘were like little memories of youth on the heavy 
| gnarled face of an old man. There was an old 
| priest who wore the thick-soled, thick-ankled shoes 
| with white canvas leggings that one sees in Chinese 
| pictures but seldom, now, in use. 
The last temple was being radically rebuilt. 
| Nothing was finished and peaceful except the great 
| fishpond in the shape of a tortoise. There was a 
| new mausoleum, empty but expectant. A big stone 
| lanternlike erection on the first floor was prepared 
{to burn the bones of holy men and was connected by 
(a sort of little service-lift with the vault below. One 
‘imagined the surprised holy ashes zooming down the 
‘shaft as though they were sausages and mash at an 

A. B.C. The bronze door of the vault was pad- 
| locked, but through the crack we could see row upon 
row of bright brick pigeonholes. I think pompous 
death must be a little shocked by these efficient 


242 THE LITTLE WORLD 


modern methods. Our soldiers, who had been busy 
robbing the temple garden of vegetables, helpfully 
offered to break or pick the lock of the vault. We 
had to use tact to restrain them; it is never wise to 
cross a soldier in China. 

We watched a service to Buddha in this temple. 
The summons, a tok-tok-tok upon a hollow wooden 
“fish,” interrupted the junior priests in their chase 
of an escaping temple hen. MHurriedly hooking 
strips of gold-brown silk over their gray cotton 
working robes, they came from all sides, blithely 
trying out their voices as they came. ‘Iwo must have 
been under ten years old. Each priest, on arrival, 
bowed seven times, striking his head upon the 
ground before Buddha. Then, led by a junior tenor, 
they sang a racy chant which quickened in beat and 
excitement every moment. ‘The refrain was the 
word “Na-mo, Na-mo,”’ a word that has no appli- 
cable Chinese meaning but was imparted from India, 
one imagines, to make poor exiled Buddha feel at 
home. The accompaniment of the chant was shared 
between the “‘fish,”’ a high flutelike bell and a growl- 
ing drum. 


PIGS AND PIRATES 


HE pig, even in China and Indo-China, where 
he is a respected citizen, is a poor traveler and 
a lazy fellow. Nobody except Susie, the Mengtsz 
pighound, can make a pig run. No pig ever wants to 
see the world. Yet the first thing the human traveler 
notices in South China, Indo-China and the Southern 
China seas, is a seething activity in the pig world. 
Traveling from Yunnan to Hongkong, one is 
scarcely for half an hour together out of earshot 
of the protests of affronted pig-travelers. At almost 
every station along the line in Yunnan and Tonkin 
a pig, or a group of pigs, got into the train, and a 
pig, or a group of pigs, got out. I imagined unseen 
tigers in the luscious knitted green jungle, licking 
their lips as our train—squealing with tourist pigs— 
went by, and then coming out on to the line to snuff 
up the exquisite scent that we left behind us on 
the air. 

The traveling pig squeals in protest all the time 
it is on the road, and so, no doubt, would other 
tourists squeal, if compelled to travel upside down 
with bound trotters slung to a bamboo pole. But 
the pig brings all its troubles on itself. All other 
tourists and domestic animals have learned to adapt 

243 


244 THE LITTLE WORLD 


themselves to the conditions of modern travel. 
Elderly ladies have invented the air-cushion and 
Mothersill; retired colonels play bridge through 
typhoons; racehorses cross oceans with a smile; 
dogs merrily wipe off their fleas on the cushions of 
first-class compartments all over the world; bullocks 
file philosophically up whitewashed gangways into 
trucks; cats and cockroaches frisk without fear on 
the decks of all ships; even a donkey could be per- 
suaded to shoot Niagara Rapids by means of a 
judiciously wielded carrot. Not so the pig. The 
pig is so indolent and so obtuse that it will not put 
one trotter before the other, even to save itself dis- 
comfort. No, it prefers to travel—by land, bound, 
a fat farcical martyr with stake attached,—by sea, 
squeezed into a cylindrical openwork basket and 
stacked absurdly on the top of other basketted pigs 
between decks with the salt spray blowing over it. 

There are not only pigs but also pirates on this. 
little French freighter. The pigs, rolled about like 
bales of cotton, came unwillingly. The pirates ar- 
rived of their own choice. Yet at this moment pigs 
and pirates probably share an intense wish to be 
somewhere else. | 

Our pirates, with a group of friends, boarded 
this ship on her last trip disguised as Chinese pas- 
sengers. Something in the contour of their figures” 
suggested to our French captain that their intentions 
were not honorable. He arrested two of them and 
found them to be stiff with concealed weapons. The 


PIGS AND PIRATES 245 


rest of the band escaped, or at any rate evaded proof 
of guilt—though I dare say some of the pigs were 
not as innocent as they pretended. The two pirate 


captives are now traveling, as regretfully as any 
tourist pig could travel, under lock and key, to stand 
their trial in Hongkong. 


The ship has touched at three ports since she left 


| Haiphong—Pakhoi, Hoihow and Fort Bayard 


(Kwang Tchow Wan). At every port the talk was 


_of pigs and pirates. At Pakhoi fifteen victims of 


pirates were in the hospital. The squealing of the 


pigs of Pakhoi is never drowned except by the 
squealing of wheelbarrows. The squealing wheel- 
_ barrows run over the tails of the squealing pigs; the 


pirates run after the squealing citizens—and that is 


Life at Pakhoi. At Hoihow a conducted tour of 
_ pigs disembarked, descending, with loud squeals, by 


means of a squealing pulley attached to a dipping 


_junk-mast. Neat squealing Hakka women direct 
operations. They wear big straw hats curtained 
_ about with deep frills that reach their shoulders so 
that their faces can only be seen when the curtain 
_ is raised and thrown back to admit of air, or to emit 


a squeal of command toa pig. At Fort Bayard the 


little strip of French territory is becoming over- 
_ crowded with refugees from the pirates. 


There is, I believe, a pirate-pig at Fort Bayard. 


It comes alongside in a little junk to tout for shore- 
- going passengers, but when no ships are in harbor 
_ Iam convinced that it does a little pirating. Other- 


246 THE LITTLE WORLD 


wise it could not look so prosperous. It is a white 


pig with refined black markings; it is of an excellent 


plumpness and yet has escaped the unpleasing corset- | 


less corpulence developed by most oriental pigs. It_ 
looks as if it were brushed and scented daily. | 


It walks with a racy sailor’s gait about the bouncing | 
boat under the tawny sail. Side by side with the | 


lady captain of the vessel it eats out of a small 
special tub. The lady, who has a baby strapped 


upon her back and wears an old embroidered ker- | 
chief folded round her head in the shape of a Vic- 


torian bonnet, looks not half so rich, romantic, and 


| 


happy as the pig. I guessed that the pig was a 


pirate-pig directly I saw the scorn in the glance that 


it threw at the trussed fat squealing tourist-pigs on — 
the French ship’s deck. The look was withering; | 
it was the proud fiery look of the outlaw scorching — 
the respectable bourgeois, the look of the romantic _ 
seafarer on the seasick landlubber. I have suffered 


from that look myself. 


HANOI 


ATIVE citizens of Hanoi did honor to the 
Tét, the splendid indolent day of their ardu- 
ous year. Families in pink and applegreen and 
_ orange robes veiled with black flowered gauze, stood 
at every door, paying festive visits. Gold and scar- 
_ let paper prayers and blessings twinkled in the breeze 
round every doorframe, and from within the doors 
burst the boisterous sounds of pipes and gongs and 
drums. The pavements of all the narrow streets 
were flowered thickly with the pink petals of spent 
firecrackers. Little boys in clean orange silk tunics, 
or crackling with new gauze robes, threw down fire- 
crackers at the feet of all passers-by, hoping to 
induce death by apoplexy or heart failure. It seemed 
unkind to disappoint them, but nothing could really 
damp their enthusiasm on such a day. If the world’s 
heroes and gods and astronomers had done nothing 
more than bequeath days of noise to little boys in 
perpetuity, their lives would have been fully justified. 
But a firecracker, it seems, like plum-puddings and 
hot-cross buns and easter eggs and all the glorious 
juvenile outcroppings of religion, has an Inner 
Meaning. I saw an elderly man, with an expression, 
as it were, sheeted in religious fervor, waving a 
247 


248 THE LITTLE WORLD 


string of merrily exploding crackers about his door 
as though it were holy incense. His dogs barked, 
his pigs had palpitations, his wives squeaked, his 
babies held their stomachs and skipped in ecstasy, | 
but it was evident that, in the old man’s view, every-: 
one but himself was missing the profound solemnity 
of his act. He had a long very thin moustache: 
divided into two limp wisps, one of which tickled 
each corner of his mouth, but the moustache was: 
not disturbed by a smile as he continued to waft his 
hellish uproar reverently to Heaven. WHe did not 
apparently remember the days of his youth. He was: 
simply dutifully disinfecting his home of demons. 

I saw a woman, equally serious and devout, pur- 
posefully throwing crackers one by one into her, 
backyard. It seemed obvious that she had actually 
sighted a demon and was aiming at him, as you or) 
I might throw a boot at a cat. 

But little boys and demons are blasphemously, 
allied. If the little boy throws the cracker, the 
demon applies the match. But what of it >the} 
uncomprehending elders are proud to see their de-/ 
scendants so faithfully applying themselves to their. 
religious duties. 

Even in the temples the paving is muffled ie 


the red sequined snow of spent crackers. ‘The alien 
intruder, trying to join a temple service unob- 
trusively, treads on a few crackers that were shat 
ming dead and brings off an embarrassing feu-de-| 
joie. But it hardly matters, there is already such a. 


SS SS 
— et 


HANOI 249 


noise in the temple. In and out among gaudy 
paper horses, and tall scarlet and gold cranes 
that balance stiffly on the backs of tortoises, and 
racks full of wild innocent gilded wooden weapons, 
walks a loud crowd shining with excitement and 
color in the tawny dusk. A fat gold Buddha beams 
tolerantly through his mosquito net of dragon- 
painted stitched reeds. In front of Buddha an old 
priest in a brown-gold robe nags noisily at the crowd, 
pointing, beckoning, jeering at an audience too rever- 
ent to retort. A great bowl stands at the foot of the 
altar beside the priest, and into this the sapéques * 
fly as though charmed out of the scarlet or green 
knots that serve the worshipers for pockets. The 
priest never fails to appraise each offering in flight, 
it seems, and, if the sacrifice seems to him inade- 
quate, he snarls, chatters, rants up and down his holy 
dais. But the worshipers, who are nearly all women, 
look through him at the kind undemanding face of 
‘Buddha; with their delicate hands clasped before 
them they kow-tow, seeing Buddha’s smile and 
hearing nothing. Behind them their babies, just able 
to stagger, clasp their little stomachs and make small 
but orthodox bows. 

The Confucian temple is the only inal temple 
in Hanoi during the Tét. Apparently the begin- 
nings of years meant nothing to Confucius. But the 
finest temple in Hanoi is his for all that. The long 
simple dark roofs of that temple are upheld by a 


* Tonkin sou. 


250 THE LITTLE WORLD 


forest of unshaped tree-trunks; there are no walls 
except walls of austere shadow. One broad paved 
courtyard steps down into another; the gateways are 
crowned with dolphins. One archway frets the sky 
with a filigree of wheels and circles, and its reflec- 
tion hangs like a frilled banner in the square stone 
lilied pool at its feet. 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 


ANOI was under a cloud, suffering from an 

access of climatic bad temper called Je crachin. 
The warm small rain gave a special harshness to 
the always harsh light of half-past five in the morn- 
ing, and all the sleepy lamps shewed that “silver 
ring” that so reasonably alarmed the mate of the 
schooner Hesperus. 

All Tonkin trains start before the sunrise as deso- 
lately and furtively as though they had committed 
crimes. In the very early morning it always seems 
that only the sun can excuse such a forlorn hope as 
a pleasure trip. Not until later, when the tolerant 
light of day rises over the bald mountainous backs 
of the buffaloes already at work in the ricefields, 
do we begin to see virtue and a future in our 
enterprises. 

The train was full of sportif Frenchmen, looking 
rather like Gallic Buffalo Bills. Each sportif French- 
man had a cowering native servant carrying guns, 
and also possessed a dog called Follette. All the 
Follettes, held tightly on leashes, glared at one 
another with bloodshot eyes from between their 
masters’ legs. A clatter of sportif talk echoed above 


the silken ears of the Follettes; everyone boasted of 
251 


252 THE LITTLE WORLD 


intimacy with la brousse. And all the time, la 


brousse, scornful of those who took its name in vain, 
moved past the train windows, darkly green, luscious” 
with thick palms, stabbed with bamboo lances, bound 

with flowering creepers, parted by roughly-thatched 


forgotten villages. 


The crachin was, it appeared, a Hanoi monopoly; 


it inclosed Hanoi like a dark forest. After three 


hours, suddenly the train burst out of the shadow 


and there was the sun throwing sliding lights down 


the banana leaves; there were the buffalo-calves 


throwing thick silly heels towards the sun. 
For two-thirds of the day, our way to Vinh was 


lined either with jungle or with ricefields. There 


always seems to be plenty to do in a ricefield; one 


never sees a Tonkinese family leaning back in its 
thatched pavilion, watching its fields prosper in the - 
sun. ‘The Tonkinese father is, to be sure, scarcely 


ever seen actually working, but he is almost always 
in the background, diligently exhorting his wives, 
mothers-in-law, aunts, daughters, and buffaloes to 
exert themselves more violently. Everywhere the 


women, in chestnut-brown and scarlet robes girded 
high about their slim legs, were wading in the mud, — 


thinning out rice-shoots, hoeing smooth waters, 


trying to hoist water in wicker sieves from one field’ 


to another, staggering under immense shoulder-loads 


and head-loads—but never driving buffaloes. Even 
a buffalo finds it undignified to be influenced by a 


mere woman in Indo-China. 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 253 


Water is induced to mount from streams into 
fields, from fields into higher fields, by various 
means. The most primitive method is to put six 
naked babies—too young to work otherwise—in a 
row at the edge of one field, and persuade them to 
splash the water all day with their hands over a dyke 
into the next field. Farmers of larger invention and 
smaller families regulate the water supply in their 


fields by means of an ingeniously balanced ladle 
_ which, as it fills with water, is swung in the desired 


direction by its own weight. But the most usual 


method is to build a ricketty tripod of bamboos on a 
dyke between a full field and a thirsty one, to sling 
a leaky wicker shovel or shallow bucket on the tri- 
pod, and then to apply two unconsidered female 
relations to the work of swinging the shovel on two 
strings rhythmically up and down, digging up chunks 
of water out of one field and shooting them across 
into another. 

In the late afternoon the country changed 


abruptly, as though the gods had woken up and 


realized the monotony of their droning exhibition of 
neat ricefields and ragged trees. The line of the 


‘land was broken up into eccentric crags, pinnacles, 


and steeples. The horizon twisted like lightning 
about the train windows. It was as if the Baie 
d’ Along had strayed ashore. 

The real Baie d’Along was still fresh in our minds 
—a wild Stonehenge of thin jointed rocks pricking 
out of the sea just outside Haiphong, a maze of 


= 


254 THE LITTLE WORLD 


green glittering channels and caves and tunnels. 
Lonely Crusoe trees were marooned on the top of 


each distorted monolith; the sea gleamed through - 


arches that only the sea-beasts might thread. Well, 
here was the Baie d’Along again, it seemed, escaped 
from its green silk net of water; here, at night, tigers 


and jackals, instead of sea-birds and sea-beasts, | 


might find their way from pinnacle to pinnacle. 
Vinh was enjoying a rainy season all its own. 
Crowded wet pavements glimmered in the light of 


the dripping thatched booths under the dripping 


trees. There was a French hotel, but it was full. 
A local conference had filled it to the brim. A 


vehement bureaucrat was thumping a table in the 
rapture of an ardent speech, probably about the 
sewage system of Vinh, and it was evident that ; 
dozens of minor bureaucrats had come miles to- 


enjoy his eloquence, even with the prospect of spend- 


ing the night three abreast on billiard tables. There 
was certainly no room for globetrotters. We must 
sleep at a Chinese hotel, though we might eat among — 


the bureaucrats. 


La Patronne, a lady of sagging Grecian silhouette, © 
with a honeysweet manner, was a person of distinc- 
tion, and exhibited over the most public mantelpiece _ 
possible a framed certificate of the bestowal upon © 


her of the Order of Millions of Elephants and a 
White Umbrella, by the King of Luang-Prabang. 


Our Chinese hotel was called the Hall of Har- | 


monious Repose. Its walls were decorated with 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 255 


late nineteenth century tradesmen’s calendars. Cock- 
roaches flopped from stair to stair. Each bed was 
simply composed of a foundation of planks, a dirty 
straw mat, and a jointed wooden mattress like a 
life-belt, which left a most painful corrugation upon 
the figure of the sleeper. The mosquito-nets were 
intermittent in texture and of an aged gray color 
and smell; they were carefully looped back, and all 
the mosquitoes had gone inside them for shelter 
from the draughts, unsuspicious of a trap. 

The wailing of the mosquitoes almost drowned 
the voices of crickets and frogs and the rustlings 
of rats and bugs in the Hall of Harmonious 
Repose. 

_ Vinh is the diving board for those who wish to 
plunge into the strange depths of Laos, the least- 
known province of Indo-China, and surely one of the 
most primitive provinces in Eastern Asia. 

At Vinh we found the Tét again—we had lost it 
in the jungle. We drove out of Vinh to the thunder 
of firecrackers. Native officials in fine embroidered 
and brocaded robes were being driven about in tiny 
victorias by scarlet-clad coachmen to pay New Year 
calls. 

But we faced towards the mountains that divide 
Annam from Laos. The road through Laos was 
only opened to wheeled traffic a few weeks ago and, 
like all young things worthy of their youth, has a 
reputation for being temperamental. But our hired 
car, caked with the mud of ages, driven by a little 


256 THE LITTLE WORLD 


goblin of an Annamite chauffeur and further manned _ 
by a small patient native mechanic in blue, looked | 
savage enough and powerful enough to swim rivers — 


or scale precipices. 

At first sight it seems that any car traveling in 
Indo-China must of necessity be amphibious. Be- 
tween Vinh and the mountains there are—mystically 
enough—seven rivers, and not one bridge among the 
seven. On every Indo-China trail the disagreeable 
little sign looking like the letter IT upside down is 


as familiar as bananas. ‘That sign means bac, or | 


ferry. A bac usually consists of a partially sub- 
merged raft, roughly pinned together, and manned, 


either by women wearing chestnut robes and black | 
hoods surmounted by the national tea-tray hat, or 


else by men wearing nothing more than small tartan 


dusters round their middles. Some bacs are poled 
along by men who walk along the vessel’s bulwarks | 
in the position of ambulant hairpins, some are pulled © 


with ropes, some are pushed by the crew, which 
throws itself into the river for the purpose, and 


some are rowed with slender bamboo rods that offer | 


the least possible resistance to the water. Each bac 
avoids, as far as possible, the slightest appearance 


of speed or efficiency. Mudbanks are there to be 


cannoned off, not to be avoided; any accident short 


of total wreck is to be welcomed as relief in the 
day’s monotony. Each bac is launched from the | 
foot of a steep slippery mud precipice, and the 
motorist’s first thought, as he peers gingerly down 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 257 


the chute at a broken gangplank all askew, is for 
his widow. 

But our goblin chauffeur hesitated at nothing. 

Danger of death by drowning was no more to him 
than danger of death by falling over precipices into 
the jaws of tigers. With one irascible yell of the 
horn he skidded masterfully on to each bac, the 
whole river quaking with the impact, the whole 
ferry’s crew leaping from under his wheels. Stopping 
his car nonchalantly on the only plank that could 
possibly bear its weight, the chauffeur would remove, 
uninvited, the hat of the nearest ferryman or ferry- 
woman and use it during the transit as a means of 
"conveying water from the river to his radiator. On 
landing he would throw the hat into the mud. 
These are the manners that make things run 
smoothly in Annam. 
There are ricefields nearly all the way from Vinh 
to the foot of the mountains. At first the fields are 
neatly and exactly squared, but presently wildness 
begins to thrust through, like the first note of pas- 
sion in serene music. Rocks and ragged trees inter- 
_rupt more and more the mild chequered pattern of 
industry. At last, after the seventh river, the moun- 
tains stamp out the gentle busy works of men. 

The mountains are dressed in thickly woven 
forest. Even upon the faces of the precipices where, 
one would imagine, no tree could find roothold, trees 
are matted together. Long, strong creepers droop 
_ down, and on these ropes, it seems, the forest swings 


258 THE LITTLE WORLD 


itself up the great cliffs. The road was like a tunnel 
with occasional tall gothic windows, through which 
an infinite world looked in, a peacock-colored world 
sewn with far silver rivers. Looking up the slopes 


i 
' 


| 
| 
| 


through the steep trees, one could see no glimpse | 


of sky, only a tangled darkness, an infinity of leaves 
that could never see the sun. 


The road ran up and down, mounting, but not : 


continuously. Out of the dark jungle tunnels we 


slid across rivers, creaking and bouncing on dubious | 
basketwork bridges that dipped, under our weight, | 
almost into the milky churned water. As we climbed | 
nearer to the highest ridge, the trees became larger © 


and more individual, the twilight of the undergrowth 
less thick. And in this way we could better see the 
banyans. ‘The banyan trails thin pale threads to 
the ground, and these grow into pillars supporting 


the parent tree and—inheriting in the course of ages | 


the banyan tradition—stand alone at last as inde- 
pendent trees. Sometimes these pillars stand astride 
Over acres; sometimes they group themselves close 
together. Sometimes they even partially merge 
themselves with the parent trunk, and then they look 
like enormous draperies falling to the ground—like 
the draperies of enormous stone Greek goddesses. 

Across the border of Laos we were at once among 
a people new to us. The Annamites we had left 
behind us were obviously related to the Chinese, 
and had the pale skin and narrow eyes we were 
used to—faces not so clever, not so independent, 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 259 


not so honest as Chinese faces, costumes peculiar to 
_ themselves, yet Chinese more or less, a sophisticated 
_ imitative people living in huts rooted to the ground. 
_ The frail plaited palmleaf huts of the Laotiens 
. were built high on thin crazy stilts. “To save them 
_ from tigers,” said our little mechanic, but it did not 
-seem likely. A sneeze from a tiger would have 
_ blown those fairy moth villages away. 
: The people were obviously of Indian stock, brown, 
handsome, small, with large sentimental eyes. The 
/ women wore their hair swept back into a loose knot 
at the nape of the neck; the well-to-do wrapped their 
bodies round in the brilliant striped silk sampots that 
jare woven in the villages, these hung like long 
‘narrow skirts to the ground; white shifts enclosed 
their shoulders and breasts under gay shawls. The 
poorer peasants wore vivid cotton tartans instead of 
silks, they wrapped their heads, with a charming 
‘carelessness, in flapping coifs of bright cotton; the 
“men were elaborately tottooed in dull blue and red. 
_ Men who wore things on their*heads politely re- 
‘moved them as we passed, some even unwinding 
‘elaborate turbans in honor of the conquering race. 
‘Everyone looked shocked to see us, and—with the 
‘universal human instinct of preoccupation with the 
ishocking—squatted down on haunches to take a 
igood look. But everyone reckoned without our 
igoblin chauffeur. No sooner were we sighted than 
‘we were gone. 
‘More wild beasts coming into our jungle,” per- 


260 THE LITTLE WORLD 


haps the watchers sighed, as the roar of our inex. | 


plicable passing died away. 


At Napé, the first considerable village in Laos — 
upon that road, there is a sala for travelers, a little | 


white house facing a wide green field. There the 


village ponies and the humped cows graze in the 
shadow of a single banyan tree as broad and many- 
stemmed as an English grove. In the sala we spent 
the night, and in the morning drove on down a soft 
dificult road which after a while became impassable. 
Our car heeled over and became rooted in soft and 
bottomless mud. It was at any rate a beautiful 


place in which to spend the rest of one’s life—there— 
seemed at first no other prospect. The trees were 
widely spaced, parklike, in deep grass; shreds of © 


morning mist trailed along the treetops and moved 


across the faces of high abrupt crags that leaned 


over the far forest. 


The tigers must have smiled, if they looked out | 


of their lairs, to see us wandering pathetically about | 
collecting twigs with which to try and fill the yawning — 
ruts and give the heavy car wheelhold. Bridging — 


eternity, as it were, with a straw. Our goblin chauf- 
feur chattered helplessly. The car leaned further 


and further backwards like a hero of melodrama | 
who, having successfully delivered himself of his” 


words, now decides to die. 
Crackety-bump—three small motor buses ap- 


peared—motor buses, parting like fairies that mass 


of vegetable chaos that was the jungle! Out of the 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 261 


buses leaped about a dozen Annamites and one 
Frenchman, who hurried towards our derelict, each 
obviously saying to himself, ‘‘Well, it won’t take me 
long to put this right...’ ‘Time is nothing to 
Annamites. One of the newcomers actually had a 
phantom wrist-watch tattooed upon his wrist. It 
stood at twelve o’clock—perpetual dinnertime. No 
doubt it successfully registered all the time he ever 
needed. While we were still uncertain whether this 
eruption of motor buses in Darkest Laos could be 
real or was only a figment of fever, the French new- 
comer showed that he was a born riser to emergen- 
cies. He wore a helmet with a thick khaki curtain 
all round it from which bristled immense curly 
- moustaches, and he said to his native servant,“Vas 
_chercher cent coolies ...’ A hundred coolies in 
this wilderness! Why not a hundred tigers or a 
hundred motor buses? Incredibly enough, the hun- 
dred coolies appeared. Was this then a city under a 
spell, disguised as bleak and voiceless forest? Our 
forlorn strip of bog-trail under the untrodden 
shadows of trees with mist in their hair had become 
a busy street moving with quick jungle men dressed 
in dust-colored loincloths, remote little brown men 
_under a wild thatch of shock hair, brown bodies tat- 
_tooed, as though with dark lace underclothes, from 
neck to knee. They swarmed like ants out of the 
forest, hewed logs, clustered on ropes, heaved to 
the tune of little muted jungle chanteys, and finally 
pulled the car out of her grave as surely as one pulls 


262 THE LITTLE WORLD 


a cork out of a bottle. We left the already well- 
bogged buses to befriend one another and went on, 
heaving down the changing trail. We crossed the 
floating bridge and sat on its steep further bank, 
watching priests in orange robes and oxen in yellow 
hides and dogs in cinnamon-colored fur and peasants 
with burdens of golden fruit on their heads, cross- 
ing behind us while the bridge still quivered under 
the outrage of our weight. The bridge is a long 
ribbon of woven bamboos threaded across a broad 
deep-set river. The ribbon is laid upon a row of 
buoyant faggots of bamboo, and these float upon 
the water. The whole contrivance is not stretched 
taut but yields to every rising and falling humor of © 
the river. And it is tethered against the strong 
current by means of long bamboo cords anchored in — 
the upper air to a taut rope from cliff-brim to cliff- | 
brim. | 

Thakhek is a rather sophisticated village—for — 
Laos. The motor bus here dies in its tracks or — 
rather—like a grub reborn as a caterpillar—pufts — 
away towards Upper Siam in the farm of a little — 
smelly steamboat. Thakhek is a spacious village on | 
the banks of a very broad reach of the Upper | 
Mekong river. The inhabitants seem habitually to 
move about in a solid mass and, while we were 
there, their movements always coincided with ours. 
We were never without an audience; their village 
was seen by us continually over a kind of stockade © 


of citizens. Without audible criticism or comment _ 
a | 


Pe 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 263 


they ringed us round, a crowd of slender handsome 
dark men of most unhumorous mien. Chests were 
worn naked, turbans and sampots were of various 
designs. One man wore a little occidental hat with 
a tiger’s tail tied round it. 

Monsieur le Résident shewed us great hospitality, 
but would not speak to us. We stayed in his wide 
casual generous house, we devoured enormous and 
excellent meals at his table, we tried to bend our 
hollow voices to a note enquiring, interesting, witty, 
domestic, alluring, in turns, but Monsieur le Rési- 
dent was thinking about something else all the time. 
Talking like that is like walking the plank of one’s 
own ideas . . . splash! our hospitable pirate drove 
us to fall off the end of our abortive endeavor into 
cold silence. I told him desperately that we were 
all journalists of international reputation, I thought 
of claiming to be the Queen of Alaska or the eighth 
Madame Landru traveling incognito, I would have 
done almost anything to make him open his eyes 
wide and say something. But he was so deeply 


absorbed in his dear Laos that he could not speak— 


even of Laos, his obsession. France was a very 


far-off thing to him; he had not seen France for 


many years and had no present wish to go home. 
His tongue was unloosed for a moment on the sub- 
ject of buffaloes. Everyone is impelled to be garru- 


‘lous, funny or satirical at the expense of buffaloes; 
‘they exist to induce a superiority complex in all 


observers. But buffaloes have their limits, and very 


& 


264 THE LITTLE WORLD 


soon we all listened in polite silence once more to the 
sound of Sao Het continuously laughing. Sao Het, 
Monsieur le Résident’s pretty Laotienne wife, radi- 
antly dressed in the native shift and sampot, had sat 
all day with her women on the verandah, weaving at 
hand-looms the curious and brilliant silks of the 
country. But whatever she did she wore a laugh in 
her voice, just as her pretty peasant girls wore 
flowers in their hair. She spoke no French that we 
could understand, but her laugh was better than 
Esperanto and she was as natural and gentle in her 
movements as a deer. 

They took us to a féte after dark. Laotien 
musicians played, one on a sort of xylophone shaped 
like a boat, one on tall reed pipes, and one on a cir- 
cular arrangement of gongs. The scale of their 
music was the same as ours with the omission of 
every sixth note. The effect was very soft and gay 
and much more intelligible than that of the ordinary 
Chinese village music. The men sat playing and 
singing in a rough thatched pavilion; the women, 
brilliant in shawls and starry with flowers, sat apart 
in a group outside. One man after another sang 
verses, obviously comic and presumably indecent, 
addressed to one or another of the women outside. 
A shout of laughter greeted the end of each im- 
promptu and, after a coy pause, the woman ad- 
dressed, holding her shawl over her delighted shy 
face, replied, and gave rise to another shout of 
laughter. A Siamese woman from across the river 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 265 


sang a Siamese song in a little thin sharp voice 
scarcely more resonant than a speaking voice. A 
smiling woman kneeled before each of us in turn, 
tied the thread of good fortune round our left 
wrists, gave us flowers—bougainvillea, hibiscus, 
frangipani .. . 

We drove next day to Savannakhet, further down 
the Mekong river. The road, though it followed 
the river, did so at a respectful distance and opened 
no windows in the wall of the forest upon the water. 
The road was threaded like a crumpled ribbon 
through the pale colorless jungle. There were no 
motor stage buses on that road, we were outside the 
region of swift efficient travel. 

The tree called Flame of the Forest balanced 
great fiery flowers on thin leafless branches as pale 
as frost. 

Savannakhet was a very hot noisy village down 
the street of which Siamese and Laotien peasants 
blew like gaudy great flowers on the hot wind. We 
never reached Siam. We took a boat and half 
crossed a very red sunset-soaked river, but only 
our voices—singing ‘Seven Greek Cities’’—ever 
reached Siam’s long lilac beaches. We threaded the 
ways of the little humble frail midstream Venices 
where peasants—hoverers between two civilizations 
and two elements, citizens owing national allegiance 
only to the winds that stir their river,—live in palm- 
leaf huts on anchored rafts with their wives and 
babies and chickens and banners, treating the fluent 


266 THE LITTLE WORLD 


and mysterious river as though it were prosaic 
stable property. But we never set foot on Siam. 
The night was sudden, the boat fragile and indolent, 
and the river wide. Savannakhet, though its Anna- 
mite inn was not hospitable, meant omelette to 
starving travelers. Still—we have sung to Siam. 

Savannakhet is cool in the morning; a breeze 
from the river moves between the pillars of the 
marketplace. In the shadow of the roofed market- 
place there is a great singing of talk and a great 
glow of color to honor the coolness of the morning. 
The thin boats stride like water-beetles across the 
river from the far palm-pricked hazy shore of Siam. 
The Mekong is a definite enough boundary line to 
satisfy kings and conferences, but to the Siamese 
and Laotiens of the border it seems to mean but 
little. On both sides of the river men talk the same 
tongue, wear clothes of the same radiance and grace, 
work at the same crafts, plait themselves the same 
neat and fragile villages out of rushes and palm 
leaves. 

The women, buying and selling at the market, all 
have flowers in their hair. The heavy hai. is swept 
back loosely to be knotted loosely—not sleeked to 
an inhuman glaze like Chinese hair. There isa flow- 
ery carelessness about dress in Savannakhet; an | 
orange or crimson shawl can never be prim; vivid | 
sampots have uneven borders of gold or silver | 
thread; a man may wear a bold, scarlet and purple 
sampot and an applegreen shawl, or he may wear 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 267 


nothing but his own beautifully tattooed skin and a 
twist of magenta cotton; he may wear a blue turban 
or a tiger’s tail round his head, or a hibiscus flower 
behind his ear—there are, it seems, no sartorial con- 
ventions on the Upper Mekong, only a craving for 
color. Only babies are austere—they wear nothing. 

We have a long way to go. No one in Savannak- 
het knows the state of the road back into Annam; 
no one knows whether the bridges will hold our 
heavy car; no one knows where we shall be able to 
sleep tonight. We came into Laos by the new 
front door, the new French trail that has succeeded 
in humping itself proudly over the mountains be- 
tween Vinh and Thakhek; we must leave Laos by 
the old back door, the dubious tremulous old jungle 
track that does not interest engineers or the enter- 
prising owners of motor buses. 

All along the track the priests stride purposefully 
under their umbrellas, their plentiful tawny yellow 
robes ballooning behind them. The older the priest, 
the deeper the yellow. Acolytes, striding with a 
milder frenzy of holy energy, are palely swathea, 
in lemon-yellow. But the umbrella and the shaven 
skull are common to all. I would rather be a plod 
ding priest than a journalist in a Panhard car on the 
trail from Savannakhet to Ch’pone, from Ch’pone 
to Lao-Bao. At every hundred yards or so the 
track buckles and dips into a green teeming steam- 
ing crease of land, a trap for black stagnant water 
“in a net of undergrowth, and this must be crossed 


268 THE LITTLE WORLD 


by means of a plaited wicker bridge which curtseys 
and creaks under our car’s weight and, after our 
passing, either twangs bravely taut again or else 
sags, a wreck, over which following priests and buf- 
faloes must balance warily. A track made by the 
naked feet of travelers and the splay hoofs of buf- 
faloes is a rutless track, rough with coarse tussocks 
of grass. The heaving of the car throws us vio- 
lently together and apart. The skull of a husband 
in one’s eye, the elbow of a friend in one’s jaw, the 
iron bar of a motor accessory against a short rib— 
at the dreadful moment of impact there is little to | 
choose between them. 

Buffaloes block progress: ‘The theft of a buf- 
falo. is the commonest transgression among the 
law-abiding Laotiens and a very heavily punished 
one. Yet to me it seems that the buffalo in the | 
jungle sails under false colors. One meets him, © 
solitary and surly, very far from the huts of men, 
bulging and crackling in the jungle like a bloated 
deer. In the inconceivable event of my coveting © 
such a thing as a buffalo, I should need very little | 
sophistry to convince myself that the treasure was — 
mine for the taking. But to consider the buffalo as — 
a treasure is, to me, most difficult. With me, he 
can only rank as an obstacle. The buffaloes watch | 
the coming car through thickly glazed eyes, and not | 
until it meets them radiator to radiator, as it were, _ 
do they begin to move, turning slowly and plodding 
ahead of the car as though they were ponderously 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 269 


presenting this new feverish warty iron buffalo with 
the freedom of the jungle. Always after we have 
negotiated the adult herd, the calves remain, awk- 
ward and flustered, shambling in front of us. ‘The 
mothers, spurred to unnatural haste by domestic 
sensibility, waddle beside us, grunting contradictory 
directions to their distracted young. 

In Laos cocks and hens are wild. It had never 
occurred to me before that the hen was anything 
but an egg-laying machine always seen through a 
rabbit-wire fence. Yet here in the forest was the 
hen—in appearance the same homely useful rather 
apoplectic-looking bird that all men know and few 
men love, with the same badly fitting feathery plus- 
fours and the same insanely judicial eye—the same 
outer bird, but in character and standing—how dif- 
ferent! As agile as a thrush she whizzes from tree 
to tree. Being a hen, of course she crosses the road 
at the last minute—but at a dignified height of 
twenty feet or so. As for the cock, though he seems 
identical in shape and color with his barndoor 
brother, here he is a quick jewel in scarlet and green 
as he shoots down a shaft of sunlight; here he has 
no duties, nobody to wake to weary work in the 


-mornings, no tame industrious sun to watch for and 


announce. It made me wonder whether all the tame 
poor things of our civilization have somewhere a 
jungle in which they are radiant and wild, whether 
somewhere unsuccessful clerks and shy curates and 


_lady-companions to irascible old ladies come into 


270 THE LITTLE WORLD 


their heritage of lovely savagery; whether some- 
where the tired old charwomen or the little underfed 
boardinghouse slavey-girls sweep gloriously like 
queens from glade to secret glade .. . 


The little post of Ch’pone is like a village bought _ 
in a box and set out on the nursery floor. One can 
almost see the round green wooden stands under 
the tight young green trees in Ch’pone’s avenue. A | 
short white stretch of abortive road, a couple of neat _ 
white wooden houses, a few spotted cows, some | 


black pigs, two magpies, and a dog with a curly 
tail—a bigger toy would overcrowd this neat flat 


ledge of land and encroach on the wild crooked 


crumpled jungle—which would spoil the game. 


The Délégué of Ch’pone bicycles forward to : 
welcome us, a big beaming buck nigger, probably | 


from Martinique. We sit about a table in his little 


white house drinking delicious light beer. His wife | 
has a gentle swarthy face and crinkly hair at the — 


apex of a flouncy pyramid of trailing white dress. 
The Délégué is very proud of being in charge of 
Ch’pone; before we have begun our beer we know 


all the circumstances of his happy fortune; before — 
the last shred of foam has slipped to the bottom of — 


the last glass we know the Délégué’s opinion of the 


past, present, and future of the ‘‘subject race’’ over — 


which he is set in authority. Intelligent? All races, 
he says, are of the same intelligence. Simply it is 


a matter of contact with civilization. Like all 


negroes he has a resonant and convincing voice, and 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA a 


there is great buoyancy and emphasis in the way he 
speaks French. He shines with the happiness of 
achieved mastership. To look out of the window 
at the Laotien villagers, gracious, sleepy, lovely as 
bright lizards in the sun, and to look again at the 
Delégué, black, thick, energetic, and completely pro- 
saic in buttony khaki, gives one a feeling of a mental 
squint. 

The Délégué has good news of a sala four hours 
further on at Lao-Bao. And thither we must go, for 
a sala—a bungalow provided by the Government 
for travelers—is the home of the homeless in the 
jungle. In Laos the alternative to a lodging in a 
sala is, conceivably, a lodging in a tiger’s belly. 
Crashing and lurching along the rough road we must 
go and, before we reach Lao-Bao, that road is only 
a strip of yellow fading light between two crested 
dark waves of forest, with vivid parrots shuttling 
between darkness and darkness. The light stays 
long on Flame of the Forest. 

Lao-Bao is a prison post. The Chef de Poste, 
with a thin quick face made ironical by the down- 
ward curve of a long moustache, hospitably as- 
sembles his convicts and his soldiers like fairies, to 
fill our bare sala with comforts. The convicts wear 
boards fitted round their necks, and chains attaching 
the knee of one leg to the ankle of the other. They 
go in rags and are very hungry; an almost empty 
corned beef tin, thrown out of the sala, is seized 
as ardently as crumbs are seized by sparrows. The 


272 THE LITTLE WORLD 
tinkle of chains haunts Lao-Bao. Yet the Chef de 


Poste is a kind man and confesses a great affection 
for the men and things of the Laos border. He 
scratches behind the antlers the enormous deer that 
lounge about his garden, he fondles the fretful mon- 
key that swarms up his leg, he pats on the head a 
little métis boy and, with naive and benign ostenta- 
tion, gives him a silver piece of money. With the 
manner of a king in his capital, he shows us his 
Laotien village. It stands high on thin legs; little 
ladders are lowered at will from the high doors to 
the palm-shadowed grass. A Laotien’s home 1s in- 
deed his castle, albeit a castle in the air. The vil- 
lage temple is no more durable; there is a gong on 
its high fragile verandah and the men who squat 
in its shadow wear canary yellow, but in other re- 
spects Buddha must democratically share the frail 
perched existence of his devotees. The gilded face 
of this peasant Buddha, though flecked by the rude 
sun that filters through the rush walls, dreams the 
same dream as do the faces of urban gods among © 
carven stone pillars and the drums and the dragons © 
of ceremony. | 

‘‘A wise and very virtuous people, my peasants,” 
says the Chef de Poste, “in the light of their own | 
laws. The young men and young women, going to- © 
gether to feasts in neighboring villages, never omit | 
to take with them these priests . . . the priests — 
even sleep in the huts of the visiting young girls to 
guard their chastity. Yes... of a formidable | 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 273 


virtue . . . The young girls have a bathing pool, 
and there I often ride to watch them. But slowly, 
slowly they immerse themselves, lowering them 
selves slowly—(he illustrates)—-and all the while 
they roll up the chemise, slowly, slowly, till they are 
covered to the neck by water. Then slowly, slowly, 
they raise themselves, unrolling the chemise in an ex- 
act manner—thus, I assure you, messieurs, nothing 
declares itself . . . Not only virtuous but practi- 
cal, you understand. Laotien law decrees that the 
man charged with touching a young girl’s breast suf- 
fers ten years’ imprisonment, the man who violates 
her—only five years. Car, en effet,—n’est-ce-pas, 
mesdames?—en ce cas il y a toujours un peu de 
bonne volonté .. . 

We came out of Laos into Annam by a road 
which festooned itself down high hot hills almost 
all the way to Hué. At midday we stopped by a 
broad shallow rushing river and bathed in strong 
rapids. We lay down in the water, setting our feet 
firmly; the river looped itself like a strong lasso 
about our shoulders, dragging with an exciting 
force. Outside the water the air was like fire; the 
very shade of the thick thirsty palms and tall grasses 
on the river banks gave no illusion of coolness. 

And Hué was hot. In Hué the very splendor of 
the old emperors seemed shrivelled like a rootless 
flower in the sun. 

A busy band was playing in the public square, and 
round and round the band strolled the representa- 


274 THE LITTLE WORLD 


tives of protecting France and their well-corsetted 
and well-tinted wives. Round and round the outer 
circle walked the Annamites in gay green and orange 
and purple robes, their broad low conical straw hats 
tied with gay ribbons under their chins. The Em- 
peror stayed at home nursing his bronchitis; there 
was no Emperor today for the crowd of flowerlike 
citizens to look at—but never mind, there was the 
band playing French comic opera, and there were 
fat buttony French officials and fat cushiony French 
wives—very nearly as grand as the old days and cer- 
tainly much funnier. Perhaps the hot wind can even 
carry the sound of the band to the sick Emperor in 
his palace across the river. Perhaps he thinks it 
plays better music than did the gongs and the cym- 
bals and the flutes that used to fill the ears of 
emperors. 

But the old emperors cannot hear. ‘They are, 
fortunately, asleep. The great pavilions of their 
tombs stand on most of the hillsides about the town © 
of Hué. Their tombs are like fortresses—for- 
tresses impregnably protected against European 
“protectors.” 

Tu Duc’s memorial tablet stands enshrined upon 
the highest of a confusion of low red pavilioned ter- 
races. The trees bend soberly over the moat where 
lotuses are, and over the wide bricked walks. The 
courtyards, bordered by cloisters, seem to sober the 
sunlight. All the red-paved ways and courtyards 
are pocked with the pawprints of jackals. They 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 275 


must have come impertinently in the moonlight, 
when the tomb was new and the paving still soft, 
almost before the Emperor Tu Duc was decently 
quiet in his grave. I imagine the irreverent goblin 
jackals coming on dancing paws and filling with their 
cracked shrill laughter the pompous air of the pavil- 
ions in which the heavy sound of imperial mourning 
had scarcely ceased to echo. And the jackals have 
left as permanent a trace as Tu Duc himself. 
Looking over the shoulders of the serene dark 
roofs is the gaudy yellow pavilion in which Tu Duc’s 
tablet stands. It wears too small a hat. All ornate 
Annamite architecture has this comedian’s-billycock 
effect when compared with the Chinese architectural 
skyline. The generous bell-hung eaves of Chinese 
tombs and temples, the curved outspringing roofs 
that veil Chinese walls in shadow—these are, it 
seems, copied meanly by Annamite designers, as 
though a disastrously economical village dressmaker 
tried to copy a French model. 
The dead emperors are all neighbors one to an- 
other. Tu Duc’s jewelled and stately ghost, fol- 
lowed by a cackling pack of rude ghost jackals, has 
‘only a little way to walk to meet the ghosts of its 
“imperial neighbors. The next emperor lies under 
| delicate terraces of carved white marble. To reach 
{his tablet one must go under a cornery threefold 
jarchway, the crosspiece of which is a dragon in 
isilver and blue enamel; one must pass along an 
avenue of stone figures—an elephant to right, an 


276 THE LITTLE WORLD 


elephant to left, a saddled horse to right, a saddled 
horse to left, old bearded stone men with patterned 
stone robes, all with a hint of life carved into the 
stone. The shrine in which this emperor’s tablet 
stands is like an idealized dream of the Marble 
Arch, and springs delicately up against a background 
of soft young pine trees. About the terraces stand 
great circular bronze tanks with wrought handles— 
an over-eternal home for ephemeral goldfish. 

There were more tombs—a tomb on every hill- 
side—a garden suburb of the splendid dead. Am 
dead empress’ pavilion was studded with porcelain 
dinnerplates varied by dessert plates and even ice-- 
cream dishes and coffee-saucers, let into the clay of 
the building. All the lions that decorated her walls | 
wore a homely armor of broken china surely unusual | 
among imperial lions. That empress must have | 
been a Martha among empresses. A drift of frangi- 
pani blossoms blew on the piny breeze over her 
tomb. | 
Another great tomb was of the same shape as | 
Annamite hats—a great golden-tiled hat uplifted on 
pillars on a circular terrace. | 

Among the trees and the tombs a peasant was 
catching butterflies with a dead butterfly decoy. He 
had caught a live one about nine inches from wing- 
tip to wing-tip, sand color and blue, with curious 
transparent windows in its wings. It only cost us 
a few coppers to buy it and release it with a caution. 

A live Emperor cannot shut up his palace while 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 204 


his dead ancestors keep such open house. Under 
great massive yellow-tiled gates we drove to the 
palace. A couple of elephants were benevolently 
carrying haystacks about in the palace park. They 
put down and lifted up their absurd blunt feet with 
a firm caution, as though determined not to injure 
the little beasts that live in the grass; as they walked 
they swung their trunks childishly in the grass and 
smiled to themselves. The imperial guard wore 
yellow puttees and tabs, and curtains round their 
conical hats. Just inside the palace gates two golden 
_ lions were being painfully baked in the sun in large 
glass cases. Yellow flags and a straw dragon whis- 
kered with dead flowers acclaimed the recent Impe- 
rial celebration of Tet. Time is apparently a play- 
thing of the Emperor’s, for all over the palace there 
were clocks and cheap tear-off calendars in great 
numbers. The calendars were, all but one, kept up 
to date. I imagine it must be one man’s full work 
_ to keep them torn off. That man’s mind must be 
dreadfully well stocked with Great Thoughts For 
the Day. Or perhaps the Emperor himself, now 
_ that he has no empire, busies himself in tearing off 
his paper days and committing Thought after 
Thought to memory. There was one calendar 
just behind his gilded throne that he had forgotten 
for two days. Poor Emperor, perhaps he shuns his 
throne when he can; it is gaudy and solitary and a 
little ricketty-looking about the legs. 
The throne-room was an immense room; the 


278 THE LITTLE WORLD 


doors at the two ends were within bare shouting — 
distance of each other. There was a forest of red © 
and gold lacquer pillars. At the foot of each pillar | 
a slender and brilliant Chinese vase stood up; at the © 
head of each pillar a dingy tarnished cheap Bir- _ 
mingham lamp bracket leaned down—stalactite and — 
stalagmite. The daylight was dimmed by very thin | 


reed mats painted with dragons, and this filtered 


light made the lacquer and the porcelain and the ex- — 
quisite embroideries of the panelled screens glow — 
like half-seen miracles. Definitions of kingly vir- _ 


tues and precepts were painted in gold and black 


upon each of the scores of red panels all round the © 
room ... Prudent Punishment ... The Wise © 
Making Up of Budgets ... The Tactful Treat-_ 


ment of Inferiors . . . Dignified Deportment . . . 


In the middle of the great room the little rich : 
ricketty throne had a gorgeous brocade cushion only © 
very slightly dinted by the weight of a ghost of — 


empire. 


The coastline of Southern Annam is like the | 
frayed edge of a rich old brocade. The sea and — 
the land are entangled together, and the traveler 


never knows, as he climbs a shoulder of coast, on 
which side of him he will next see water. 


There are three day-long stages between Hué and — 


the railhead, Nhatrang. 
The way from Hué to Tourane leads partly 
through the sky. Over the Col des Nuages the road 


is flung, like a lasso about the thick uprearing neck — 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 279 


of a steer. The thick trees fence in the climbing 
road. The zigzags of the road, diagonally laid 
across the wall of mountain ahead, are like the crazy 
rungs of a monstrous ladder. From close up under 
the sloping ceiling of this great attic of Annam one 
can still see the immense deep-laid foundation of 
the world—the sea, ruled neatly with small still 
waves. But from the very top of the pass one sees 
nothing; clouds make their permanent headquarters 
on the top loop of the road. Even a big defant 
two-foot lizard, coming out of the dripping under- 
growth to defy intruders, looks like the little ghost 
of a dragon in the dimmed air and, like a ghost, dis- 
solves in the mist, finding its defiance useless. 

The road was difficult and the nerves of our gob- 
lin chauffeur—which had never seemed very tough 
—at last gave way with an effect like an explosion. 
A woman in a gay red robe, having perched herself 
safely on the side of the road at our approach, 
obeyed at the last moment that demon that prompts 
hens and puppydogs—and changed her mind. The 
next moment, though her life had been saved by a 
matter of inches, she perhaps wished that death had 
been her portion. For our goblin chauffeur, with a 
high scream of rage, stopped the car, flew out of 
his seat like a champagne cork and, with a terrifying 
spidering of his legs and arms, threw himself at 
the offending woman. He ran, she ran; her robe 
blew like a flag behind her, her great hat fell off, 
_ her market produce was scattered, she and the chauf- 


280 THE LITTLE WORLD 


feur screamed in unison. For a moment it seemed 
that he would throw her into the river which flowed 
conveniently below. But he gave up suddenly. He 
was as inconsequent as a monkey and, jabbering like 
a monkey, he returned to his alarmed passengers 
with a proud look of one who has shown the world 
what’s what so that’s that. For several miles he 
chattered shrilly to himself as he yanked the wheel 
irascibly about. 

Tourane is a charming unassuming little port sit- 
uated in a constant brisk sea-breeze upon a blue arm 
of the sea. The mountains lean over Tourane and, 
on the mountains, the tall clouds are balanced on 
pedestals of their own shadows. 

At Tourane harsh circumstances tore the party 
asunder. ‘Tourane could only offer us an inadequate 
small Ford for the next stage and I insisted on being 
the one to travel alone by native stage bus to meet 
the others at Quinhon. 

The bus started before daylight from the Post 
Office at Tourane. The big Annamite driver, whose 
face was as fat and flat and whose shoulders were as 
massive as a negro’s, shouted as he threw the mail- 
bags on to the roof of the bus with his strong arms. 
The little mechanic was on the roof doing the subtler 
work of stacking and securing the mailbags; to him 
fell all the abuse. Through all the noise of loading, 
the one native passenger, a woman, slept on the 
seat of the bus, her great straw hat covering almost 
her whole crumpled body. I traveled first class. 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 281 


I sat between the driver and the little mechanic on 
the front seat. 

We roared out of Tourane as daylight began 
to make the lights look accidental. All the naked 
brown babies of the town came out to see us go, 
their silver amulets bouncing against their little pot- 
bellies. A yelling woman ran out and saved a puppy 
almost from under our wheels. This was presum- 
ably because the puppy would make good eating, 
not—alas—good loving. 

The driver bent his great shoulders over and 
round his wheel with an enveloping look of atten- 
tion, as a very hungry man bends over his plate. 
But as more and more native passengers entered the 
bus, and the sleeping woman had to sit up and con- 
verse, the talk of the passengers gradually broke 
into the driver’s sanctuary of concentration, and he 
had to turn to exhort, correct, or applaud the 
talkers. 

“Chauffeur, attention, tu vas écraser un chien.” 

“Madame ta pas avoir peur.” 

The road was very flat and slightly dyked above 
the land. The distant line of the sea, sharp and 
metallic as a knife, cut between the ragged plumes 
of the eastward trees. And sometimes the forsaken 
salt lakes of the sea ran up to the left ditch of the 
road and the ricey marshes to the right, so that 
water on all sides caught the sun. The marshes had 
a bloom of very young rice, as soft on the water as 
down is on a young boy’s chin. Where there was no 


282 THE LITTLE WORLD 


rice, slender starry lilies grew. But to the left, on 
the salt water, there was no bloom but the shadows 
of clouds sailing between dune and dune. 

Outside Postes-Telegraphes in each village a thin 
flaccid sack of mail waited in charge of a native 
postmaster dressed in a lily-white robe. The big 
bus-driver wore the blue overalls of America and 
spiritual conquest, and he had an imperial manner 
with postmasters. His great baritone quelled their 
thin tenors as he thrust gossip from other villages 
upon them. The little mechanic meanwhile climbed 
continually up on to the roof and down again, ar- 
ranging sacks in industrious silence. At one village 
the bus stopped for a long time, delayed by interest 
in a domestic crisis. A man, two or three of his 
friends, and a selection from his mothers-in-law 
were beating the man’s wife. It looked like a game; 
flat awkward hands were flapping the air ineffect- 
ually about the young woman’s shoulders and arms. 
She was terrified. She uttered thick appalling 
screams even when no hand actually touched her. 
She threw her arms about like a madwoman and 
span and ran and fell against the walls of the yard. 
Everyone in the bus was much amused. ‘The as- 
sembled villagers, too, shewed an honest pride in 
their spectacle, which they felt was making a good 
impression on us haughty aliens from other villages. 
Even when the young woman sank to the ground, 
still shrieking, and lay writhing while one old 
mother-in-law made ranting cries and gestures over 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 283 


her body, as though to point the moral, the bus 
could not at once bring itself to move away. The 
driver was shaking with amusement. But duty ts 
duty, even in Annam—at any rate in the long run— 
and when one carries the Courrier Colonial one can- 
‘not too long linger over roadside delights. 
All the native passengers talked at once. No 
man, it seems, is a stranger to his fellows in Annam, 
be his village never so remote. The Annamite 
tongue sounds like Nyang-nyang-nyang,; there is a 
whine and a grievance in the sound of it. A cock, 
hanging upside down from a passenger’s arm, 
crowed; men and women cleared throats and spat 
red betel-juice; our comedian had a very witty way 
of chewing and spitting. There is a comedian in 
every bus all the world over, and ours was a crooked 
simple sardonic old man with a gray chignon droop- 
ing below his black turban. However loud the gen- 
eral conversation might be, everyone had attention 
and a laugh to spare for the comedian whenever 
he spoke. Annamite women, who enamel their teeth 
black to prove their virtue, look like frogs when they 
laugh. Everyone, too, shewed a devoted interest in 
the affairs of the very old man in a stiff purple cot- 
ton robe who did not seem to know where he was 
going. Often he thought that he had arrived and a 
concerted roar from his helpful neighbors stopped 
the bus, but each time the old man dribbled, 
mumbled, and heaved himself like an uneasy 
sleeper, giving us to understand that the alarm 


284 THE LITTLE WORLD 


was a false one. No one got tired of trying to 
help him. 

The little mechanic crawled about the outside of 
the rattling, leaping bus like a lizard round a wall. 
A passenger’s fare was reckoned in consultation with 
the next stone kilometre-mark passed after his en- 
trance. Passengers sat chattering on tenterhooks, 
their coppers chinking in their hands, while the little 
mechanic, one precarious foot on a mudguard and 
the other on a door-handle, waved in the wind out- 
side the rushing bus, watching for the stone sign. 
And when the figure was announced, a wail of pro- 
test always accompanied the payment of the fare. — 

Two smart passengers inserted themselves into 
the first class between the mechanic and me. Both 
wore black flowered gauze, one over a green robe 
and the other over a white one; their trousers were 
dazzling white, their clogs were decorated with col- 
ored beads, their black turbans were coiled with 
incredible neatness. They were obviously first-class 
passengers to the core, and not conceivably to be 
herded with the hay-trusses, dried fish, pumpkins, 
upside-down hens and straw- and cotton-clad travel- 
ers behind. Yet each of the two bowed himself 
double, clasping his stomach, and said, “Madame 
excusera?” before presuming to sling his luggage on 
to my proud imperial feet. 

Bacs put their best oar foremost as our great bus 
hailed them. It is something, even to the skinny 
half-naked skipper of a dozen leaky boards nailed 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 285 


together, to carry the Courrier Colonial. The 
big chauffeur made everyone else descend from the 
bus and walk on to each bac, to distribute the 
weight. Only he and I, outriders of conquering 
civilization, remained in our seats. On the largest 
bac there was an entertainer, a little blind boy click- 
ing two attuned pieces of wood together in a most 
excellent and racy rhythm. To the accompaniment 
of this curious exact shrill clicking, he sang an ex- 
cited little song, also in a very accurate, almost syn- 
copated rhythm. He sang it in a clear confident 
voice up and down his breath. He seemed tense and 
drunk with the ranting excitement of his song; his 
springing voice sounded more and more sharply 
at every verse; his blind hollowed eyes twitched; his 
little clogged foot kicked the air. There were end- 
less verses to the song and the singing occupied 
the whole slow crossing. Each verse varied the 
tune a little. 

At about twenty yards from the southern bank 
our overloaded raft ran aground. We took a kind 
of pivoting root in sand, while shrieks from the 
ferrymen prevailed upon a rival raft to come and 
lighten us of some of our passengers. In a com- 
pact mass all my fellow passengers changed boats 
and were poled away in a kind of slow cyclone of 
uninterrupted cacklings and squawkings. ‘The re- 
lieved bac, containing the bus, the driver, and me, 
in a silence that seemed tomblike by contrast, could 
now be pushed to shore by the amphibious ferrymen, 


286 THE LITTLE WORLD 


The bus set its wheels on a long strip of wickerwork 
which, for a quarter of a mile, took the place of 
a road across a soft blinding plain of sand. A dis- 
tant shrill even jangle of discordant sounds marked 
the cheerful progress of my fellow passengers, pa- 
tiently pursuing us on foot until a better road should 
be reached. 

At Quang-Ngai the bus stopped for luncheon at 
an Annamite inn. 

“Chauffeur, toi pas partir sans moi—bien str.” 

“Madame ta pas avoir peur.” 

The flies in the inn were callous to rebuff; in mil- 
lions they stood impartially on me, on three good- 
hearted but diseased dogs, on a couple of pigs at the 
door, on the half-bald hens that followed the waiters 
in and out, on the sardines on my plate. The 
starved dogs, on whose protruding ribs the patches 
of mange were stretched taut, tried to climb on to 
my lap. They said that the inn had never enter- 
tained so complaisant a guest; it seemed to them 
incredible that they should actually be encouraged 
to eat the whole of the flyblown déjeuner. The 
sound of the flies in the strong heat during the two 
hours’ breathing space was like a horn played by 
one who never paused to draw breath. 

The form of the driver, hunched fatly over the 
wheel, reappeared as graciously as the form of a 
long-lost friend. ‘Moi pas oublier madame.” 

The road swung up and down low hills now. Sec- 
tions of sunny sea were dovetailed into the ends of 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 287 


green valleys. And I shall never forget one sheeny 
-palmy valley that glittered as bravely as the sea. 
“The whole valley was starred with palms, and 
every leaf of every palm juggled with a sword of 
sunlight. The pale pearly-green coconuts clung 
round the thin necks of the palms, close under their 
funny shock heads. We passengers drank cool 
bubbly coconut milk from the shell, while the bus 
collected the mail from a straw-thatched village that 
smelt of pigs and glowed with orchids and banana 
flowers. 

A pretty woman passenger caught the bus there, 
running on tuned clogs, ding-dong ding-dong. .. . 
She wore an orange robe and her big straw hat was 
tied down to the top of her turban with red ribbons 
that fluttered under her chin. She was committed to 
the driver’s care by her husband, a fat apoplectic na- 
tive in a French khaki suit. She bowed to him and 
wrung her hands in his direction as the bus started, 
but round the corner a pretty young man ran be- 
side us and threw a flower and a note which she 
caught adroitly in her outstretched hat. She 
laughed, showing all her shiny black teeth, when she 
read the note, but she let the flower fall. 

The hills sprang higher and higher; the driver 
crouched more exclusively over his wheel as the 
road looped itself round the cones of the hills. New 
valleys, new spaces, new seas were flung in front 
of us and then behind us as we turned and turned. 
The sun fell low and dyed the hills yellow, but it 


288 THE LITTLE WORLD 


could not stain the whiteness of the sand-dunes | 


which crouched, striped with sparse gray grass, 
between the hills and the sea. 

On the hills were steepled red sandstone shrines, 
each shrine very solitary on a bleak summit, each 
shrine fretted with carvings that now only served as 
roothold for the creepers and the little wind-blown 


flowers and shrubs. China’s peaceful horizontal | 
lines were as last forgotten; here were the “pine- — 


apple” outlines of the south, the cramped peaks and 
pointings, the encrusted subtleties of India. 

“Chauffeur, toi savoir quel homme batir ces 
pagodes-la?” 


“Moi pas moyen savoir, madame. Tout le monde 


pas moyen savoir. Tout ¢a beaucoup vieux. Tout 
Ca LOUE IE ean 
Quinhon, being reached in the dark and left in a 


morning mist, was interesting to us only fur the 
fact that there our party was reunited. The stage 


from Quinhon to Nhatrang was a hot but beautiful 
stage. A harbory land is the southeastern corner 
of Annam; everywhere a vivid fresh sea comes in 
at numberless rock gateways that only the golden- 
sailed native fishing boats know. ‘The fragile fish- 
ing villages are plaited for safety with the steeply 
climbing trees that grow on the black and silver 
wild edge of the sea. Inland sweep the hills, 
chequered with hedged fields and curiously like 
English ‘‘colored counties.”’ English fields, seen, as 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 289 


it were, through arsenic-green glass—for here were 
none of the mellow golds and lemon-colors and soft 
spring greens of home. 

Between Nhatrang and Saigon one must forsake 
air and happiness and the comfort of free will and 
green coconuts, and travel by train. Blinds down, 
electric fans whirring, dust-caked throats, moribund 
flies, voluble French schoolgirls for fellow passen- 
gers . . . for a while we forgot the pleasant art 
of traveling, for a while we merely proceeded pain- 
fully from one place to another. 

At one deserted halt in the blind gray jungle, with 
no work of human hands other than the railway 
line in sight, a most unlikely visitant boarded our 
train—an American soldier in khaki, with his hat 
tasselled with the familiar acorns, his arms full of 
peacocks’ feathers, the accent of Illinois on his 
tongue. It was easily explained—a major on leave 


from Manila .. . after tigers . . . only one skin 
. nearly killed by an elephant .. . say, ain’t 
the niggers queer around here... But no ex- 


planation could dismiss the initial surprise of his 
arising from the dreadful sheer jungle. 

Saigon is a city of which French colonials speak 
with pride, and French novelists write with succu- 
lence and daring. But we find nothing to remember 
in it except its lack of beauty and its stifling heat. 
There was, I have always understood, a breed of 
hen that was patented in Cochin China. If this 


290 THE LITTLE WORLD 


was so the recipe must have been lost, for I did not 
meet a single hen, dead or alive, nor anything else 


real, typical, or exotic. I only know that the band © 
in the hotel was playing ‘Yes, We Have No | 


Bananas” as we arrived. 


Were it not for the hope of seeing Angkor, no | 


one would ever motor from Saigon to Pnom-penh. 


It is the dullest day’s work in the world—I say that | 


with confidence. Saigon, as I see it, is not worth 


going to and, equally, not worth coming away from. | 
The only view from the road at first is of rubber — 


plantations. Rubber trees are of a refreshing clean 


green; they always look as if they ought to bear 


splendid and vivid fruit, not mere stuff for motor 


tires. Yet, after a very few miles one wearies of the 


exactness of their spacing, the monotony of their 
shape, and the ubiquity of the prosaic tin cans that 


collect their life-blood. After leaving the rubber — 


plantations one traverses a blank in the world. 


There are two ferries and, between these, a dry 
yellow grass wilderness stretches from sky to sky, | 


varied only by a few stumpy blowsy palms and an — 


occasional mud-hole in which buffaloes wallow. 
There are only birds to look at and these, being 
all of one kind, soon become as stale as rubber 
plantations. They are long-legged, smartly tailored 
birds, wearing black wings over white waistcoats, 
and they look all dressed up and no place to go. 
Pnom-penh is the capital of Cambodia, and has 
a real live king living in a palace hideous enough 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 291 


to take rank with any other royal residence through- 
out the world. We went and groaned superciliously 
about the palace precincts. The roofs all bristle 
with crinkled gilded rays; wherever that palace can 
radiate it radiates a thousandfold. There is not an 
honest horizontal or vertical line in it. The whole 
effect is like a disastrous sunburst. The pictures of 
the king in state costume show that the radiating 
mania is an essential part of Cambodian life—he 
wears a row of crimped brass flames on either shoul- 
der to match his palace. He is, however, a very 
docile good king, we understand, and indeed might 
almost be a Frenchman. He retains one Cambodian 
ideal—his interest in and support of the dancers 
for whom his country is famous. But on the day 
we were there they were enjoying their rest, and we 
could only see the empty open pillared dais on which 
they dance. ‘They are strenuously trained from in- 
fancy and, by means of the art of their pliable 
bodies, have built a strong and wonderful tradition 
in which a thousand years ago and a thousand years 
hence find common ground. 

The Chinese of Pnom-penh, not the native Cam- 
bodians, provided the entertainment of that hot 
evening. Silk Guilds were marking some unspecified 
occasion by an endless series of processions up and 
down the palm-bordered bank of the Mekong river. 
Decorated ponies drew waggons on which colored 
revolving discs and painted screens made back- 
grounds for groups of magnificently dressed chil- 


292 THE LITTLE WORLD 


dren. The children at first seemed to be dolls; 
poised in mid-air on almost invisible loops and props 
of wire, they steadied themselves only by resting 


their hands on the tops of poles which were carried | 


by coolies walking beside the waggons. Some chil- 
dren sustained incredible attitudes of flight and 


movement, and one little girl seemed to be hanging — 
by her hair. Yet their faces were calm and expres- 
sionless, and only when one noticed the occasional 


sraceful waving of a fan or the calm and remote 


patience in a pair of watchful eyes, did one realize | 


that hearts beat and pride surged up there in that 
inhuman encrustation of gorgeous silks and embroid- 
eries and powder and paint. Behind each waggon, 


on a pony’s back, rode a little baby with its crowned 


sleepy head rolling above its elaborate dress, and its 


limp little body supported by a proud father. But 
what the meaning of the fantastic procession was I _ 


know no more than if it had been a dream. 


We were to be the first tourists in the world’s 


history to reach Angkor entirely by land in a car. 
When we enquired about the new road from Pnom- 
penh—the completion of which road had been the 
subject of congratulation a few days before in all 
newspapers interested in the Far East—we found 
that, in Pnom-penh itself, the existence of the road 
was not credited. “One goes by boat to Angkor. 
Messieurs mesdames deceive themselves . . . by 
automobile nothing marches . . . ’’ Even the Chief 
of Police had never heard of a road to Angkor. A 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 293 


new road is not without honor save in its own 
country. But a genius at the garage had heard of 
the road and directed us at last. He did not think 
we should reach the other end of it, but what of 
that? 

For a hundred and seventy kilometres the road is 
fairly good. Bits of it have been washed away by 
floods, but there is always a graded dip down into 
the desert which, by daylight, is not difficult. But 
after Kompong-thom the good road dies; a prelim- 
inary sketch for a road is all that exists. The track 
that heaves and hiccoughs over the dry bed of the 
Great Lake is one to be remembered with tears of 
blood and gasoline. Soft yielding sand stretches 
for miles; the car grinds and skids insanely, and 
never can find a yard of firm ground from which 
to take off for a plunge through a sandhole. In the 
last seventy kilometres—which we cover by moon- 
light—there are over a hundred bridges that are 
not, so to speak, there yet. To the triumphant en- 
gineers and the congratulatory leaderwriters, the 
road to Angkor is an accomplished thing. But a 
motor car has no eye of faith; its unimaginative tires 
must flounder in deep sand; a hundred handsome 
bridges designed on paper in Saigon cannot save us 
now from rolling and roaring and bucking through 
the dry bridgeless streambeds in the streaked light 
of the tepid Cambodian moonlight. 

After thirteen hours of almost continuous strug- 
gle, here is Siem Reap, the “port” of Angkor. 


294 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Thence a good road whisks us through the forest 
to Angkor. 

Angkor Vat, by full moonlight, is heaped upon a 
line of dim moon-reflecting moat. Across the moat 
on a great causeway we go, feeling like shadows. 
Incredible stillness melodramatically succeeds thir- 


teen hours’ prosaic clatter. There is a gateway 
crowned with a peaked dome, another causeway to | 


an inner gate and, beyond that, the holiest highest 


place stands on a symmetrical peak of very steep | 
steps. Bordering every causeway the stone body 


of Naga, the holy Cerberus snake, acts as a balus- 


trade, and, at every corner, Naga rears his great . 
broken fan of heads to defy the proud stone lions | 


that flank the gateways. 


Eight hundred years of jungle oblivion have | 
drained those wide spaces empty even of ghosts, I | 
think. The stone monsters have guarded the place | 


too well. 
It is surprising that Angkor Vat is quite a young 


wonder of the world. Even we Europeans, who are | 
generally found to have been blue hairy hordes at 


the time of the gorgeous decline of Eastern civili- 
zations,—even we had invented trousers and built 


Westminster Abbey at the time Angkor Vat was_ 


built. Angkor Thom is a little older, but still not 
too old for the imagination to remember. 


For Angkor, the forest has taken the place of | 


years. The trees stand like wild cynical companions 
among the carved pillars of the temples; a net of 


| 


| 


—_——— 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 295 


weeds has caught the old stone pools; the grass has 
flowed in like a tide over the paved steps and the 
stone feet of gods and monsters; little soft cruel 
plants are strong enough to tilt and tear in two the 
great friezes, the stone stories that once were a hot 
strong excitement in men’s minds. 

Naga, the snake, is a stone prophecy. The ghosts 
of the men who linked, by means of Naga’s stone 
body, one pinnacled gateway with another, must 
know now what they meant—now that the forest, 
many-headed, many-mouthed like Naga, has de- 
voured their treasure. Naga, in the light of the 
moon, challenges strangers and binds them with a 
spell. Naga’s monstrous taut body along the broad 
causeways leads strangers away and away from 
everything neat and known. Come along... 
come along ... stranger ... let the lions throw 
out their silly stone chests for the admiration of the 
crazy palms .. . let the fish mumble among the lit- 
tle green sequins of weeds upon the pools .. . let 
the bats, blurs of silver, swing and shimmer and mew 
against the frosted sky at the top of the broken 
tower ... come, stranger, the night is short... 
Naga’s heads are reared at the end of the wide way, 
arrogantly and finally. Look now .. . this is my 
Angkor, my treasure. . . you shal share a treasure 
with me and the forest ... The holy place ts 
propped on a precipice of insanely steep steps, so 
steep that the moonlight shuns the slopes of that 
fierce hill, and touches only the three proud horns 


296 THE LITTLE WORLD 


that toss the stars. Naga, keep your dreadful 
treasure, strangers must seek it by the safe trans- 
forming light of the sun... 

Day comes up dull and hot, impaled on the horns 
of Angkor. By daylight the forest indeed retreats; 
by daylight the smart reasonable efforts of French 
preservers and renovators make their effect; by day- 
light the holy place is not too holy to be winked at 
by the rude eye of a Number One Brownie. For 
Brahma is dethroned by the light of the day and 
in his place there is kind placid Buddha, wearing a 
yellow dress, like a child in its party frock. Even 
Naga, by daylight, can look a fool. It seems now 


that there was an undignified episode in the life of | 


Naga. It is spitefully bared to the sun in bas-relief 
along one of the galleries. 

Naga, one day before history began, went to sleep 
coiled carelessly round a mountain and there was 
found by a group of idle giants. They divided into 
two teams and taking hold of Naga’s head and tail 


began a tug-of-war. One imagines poor Naga wak- | 


ing up and saying, ‘“‘Hey, fellers, that’s enough—no, 
I mean seriously, this is beyond a joke . . . ” And 


his protests were reinforced from all sides. For the | 


mountain round which Naga was coiled happened to 
be the one on which heaven and earth were balanced. 
The pull to, pull fro of the tug-of-war twirled the 


mountain this way and that. Seldom are the true | 


gods seen in attitudes of such impotent indignity as 
this frieze shews—thrones reeling, crowns askew, 


: 
| 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 297 


divine legs and arms sprawling in an effort to re- 
gain balance. Really it might be the twentieth cen- 
tury. But the waters under the earth are in still 
worse case. A crimped chaos vividly expresses the 
turmoil. Crocodiles, sea-horses, newts, axolotls 
and plain whiting are seen bursting in two; even 
when they remain intact they are upside down, and 
their expression—down to that of the smallest eel— 
well suggests their intense astonishment and dis- 
comfort. At each end of the frieze a company of 
men and horses applaud the heartless game. There 
is a demon coach, too, with a great shouting mouth 
and gesturing arm, giving the word—‘‘Pull, boys, 
pu-u-ll . . . Good Lord, what are yer arms made 
of—treacle? Now pull like hell, all together, boys 
io .by God; you've got’ em: )...t))’> Oneiimagines 
that Naga, now in retirement in a suburb of the 
Seventh Heaven, can never go into its club without 
seeing its fellow members smiling behind their 
hands, remembering that day... . 

Round every courtyard the friezes run, and there 
is excitement and a most childishly told story in 
each frieze. There is a meeting between two gods, 
one mounted on a peacock and the other on a goose. 
The goose-rider is not apologetic, as you or I might 
be if we, padding up Rotten Row on the family 
goose, met a friend on a peacock. I think it is only 
in the light of ribald modern legend that the goose 
has become a butt and a buffoon. The goose-mount 


of the Angkor god was of the same family as the 


298 THE LITTLE WORLD 


geese who saved Rome, and the geese whose lovely 
female guardian married the prince in the story. 
After the marriage of the goose-girl, the breed of © 
geese degenerated. No god, no king, not even an | 
O.B.E., would be seen on a goose today. A rhino-— 
ceros is witness of this meeting, an unmistakable 
rhinoceros with pocked and plated skin, pig ears and ~ 
a knobbed nose. No rhinoceros walks that jungle 
now. But I hope the fame of that stone portrait 
has reached Rhinoceros in his inner jungles, so that 
he may say to his friends, ‘‘There’s a portrait of me 
somewhere—of me, when I was young—hobnobbing 
with the gods.’ In another gallery is fought the 
war that Ram fought with the King of Ceylon for 
the possession of Sita. There are the monkeys, 
Ram’s allies, and there, too, romp the dear ele- 
phants. The sculptors of Angkor were connoisseurs 
and lovers of elephants; all their elephants bounce 
in and out of the scraps and tangles of Khmer 
mythology, dimpled, twinkling, and curly-trunked. 
This must have been the age of innocence for ele- 
phants; gods were elephants then and elephants 
gods. The death of gods and the birth of the Brit- 
ish Empire have bowed their bumpy heads and 
straightened their retroussé trunks. 

All around the galleries the stone battles sway 
and the processions rear their banners in the striped 
sunlight that comes between the pillars. But in 
the holiest place there is no pomp—only dancers 
dancing. On every inch of pillar and wall the stone 


ee: v ‘ 
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& fo 
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<a y . a oe he 
=P ; Ret \ 


THE PARVENU 


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Vt ART 
“OE TARE 


~ WBERSITY OF Lumats 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 301 


dancers dance, dance for the applause of alien 
Buddha—who never sees them. There is a brocade 
of silken stone all around and about the holy place, 
intricately patterned with passionless faces, crowns, 
bodies bent like wheat, arms and legs that writhe 
like flames—a pattern as full of purpose and direc- 
tion as written wisdom. But there is no one to 
profit by the wisdom in the holy place by day. The 
day explains too much. Parvenu Buddha is bored 
and asleep in the holy place that he usurped with the 
help of the sun. By day he is safe. Naga, who 
challenges and devours by moonlight, is a broken 
stone worm by day, blind to all follies under the 
sun. By night perhaps Buddha knows and fears 
the beauty of the dancers and the terrible echoes of 
their music. By night he hears Brahma’s accusing 
voice. For Brahma, with his four great calm stone 
faces, is an outcast in the forest by day. About his 
eyes and throat the chains of the forest are 
wrapped; his forehead is a vantage tower for the 
pert clucking monkeys, his eyes are blinded by the 
creeping mosses and between his lips the gold 
lizards run. 

We are unexpectedly recailed by telegram to 
China. The next ship for Tonkin leaves Saigon to- 
morrow; to catch her we must drive all today and 
all tonight along that difficult road. 

In our final curtailed sight of Angkor we must 
dash irreverently about that stately miracle as no 
one ever dashed before. It is like a nightmare— 


302 THE LITTLE WORLD 


Look here—look there—see that frieze—try not 
to forget the attitudes of that row of dancers— 
serene distortion—nine minutes for Angkor Thom 
—I don’t think we need really stop to look at this 
gate—just drive slowly—oh, well, perhaps we ought 
to spare ten seconds, there’s another four-faced 
Brahma—yes, drive on—look how the trees have 
grown up in the palaces—the trees, at least are leis- 
urely guests—here’s the Leper King’s palace and his | 
statue—(I see the leprosy—no, silly, that’s his 
moustache)—here’s the Terrace of Elephants, 
they rollick chubbily round the frieze like little boys 
coming out of school—carved a thousand years ago, 
yet we don’t have to make any complacent twentieth 
century allowances for them—wmore great strangled 
stone faces among the creepers—what impudence 
the monkeys and parrots have, chattering and chuck- 
ling about—would that gallery make a good snap- 
shot?—ten minutes for breakfast and we must go. 
Have we seen Angkor or has the jungle given us a 
feverish dream? 

Heaving and grinding we go, hour by hour, 
through the stifling air of the jungle, along the heavy 
broken track. A couple of violent rainstorms turn 
the soft dry road into a soft wet one, but everything 
is a little easier by daylight. By daylight, too, one © 
can see the parrots, and the red hawks, and the 
snakes that move in the sand so inexplicably that one 
disbelieves one’s eyes, and the lizards—real golden ~ 
lizards with stripes of ruby—and the big vultures 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 303 


with bald pink heads and bald pink necks and slov- 
enly half-spread wings, leaning over the carcase of 
an animal. 

A short delay with engine trouble prevents us 
from beating our own record—(since we were 
pioneers only yesterday, our own is the only record 
to beat). We reach Pnom-penh in about fourteen 
hours. We arrive at the hotel hoping for two hours’ 
sleep, but a telegram, awaiting us there, bursts this 
bubble of hope. Our ship leaves at noon tomorrow 
—not tomorrow, today—it is one o'clock in the 
morning. With luck we can doit. Our driver sags 
on his feet, poor man, his head nods and rolls. Is 
there another driver in Pnom-penh sufficiently awake 
to drive us through the small hours? The hotel- 
keeper says no. Indeed our experience in Indo- 
China teaches us that Frenchmen always say no. 
Rien a faire is the characteristic French-Colonial 
contribution to the discussion of an emergency. Our 
driver, not being a Frenchman but a mere Cochin- 
Chinese, goes out, drunk with weariness, to see what 
he can do. A less excellent creature would have 
deserted us at this point, only reappearing next 
morning after a good sleep. Not so our dear driver. 
Half an hour sees him return in company with a 
new driver, who wears a gaudy pink and purple 
plush cap of the kind worn by very dashing occiden- 
tal office-boys at the funerals of their grandmothers. 
So we are off, our good senior driver uncomfortably 
asleep on the shoulder of his substitute. 


304 THE LITTLE WORLD 


But I cannot sleep. The moon is swimming low 
over the \low flat land and, in the increasing dark- 
ness, our headlights pick out the mysterious lights 
of the jungle. I had heard of the Indo-China night- 
shooting, each sportsman equipped with a strong 
light bound upon his forehead and ready to fire be- 
tween any pair of eyes his lamp shewed him. But 
I could never have believed that so many pairs of 
bodiless wild eyes and eyes of so varied an owner- 
ship could be seen on a dark silent road. Little 
snakes, little lizards, little rats and mice—even, they 
say, big insects—a pair of sparks in the long ray be- 
trays each asit turns to face us. A bird, big or little, 
turns but one round lamp eye to meet the light. The 
bigger creatures cannot hide the great well-separated 
globes of their eyes, yet even when they slip aside 
at so close a range that one can darkly see the slink- 
ing quick body behind the eyes—they cannot be iden- 
tified, their fierce forest reserve is maintained. A 
panther perhaps . . . a deer perhaps .. . a tiger 
perhaps . . . a ghost of a dragon perhaps . . . we 
shall never know anything except that their eyes 
shone. | 

The ferries seem broader by fading moonlight, 
but we are fortunate in finding the moored ferry- 
boats, in both cases, at the near bank. Men sleep 
in sacklike heaps upon their decks. Our drivers 
yell, toot the horn, and kick. The more alert ferry- 
men pass on the kicks and the curses to their sleepier 
companions. Splash over the crazy planks on to” 


: 


JOURNEY IN INDO-CHINA 305 


the ferry, and we are safe. We pass dreamily across 
. pale space, and only realize that we have slept when 
the roaring, yelling, and splashing awake us with a 
jerk at the bank. 

_ Dawn comes stealthily as all dawns come. There 
is no smile in this Cochin-China dawn, only a bleak 
_ increasing consciousness. Early drivers of buffaloes 
_ and oxen are starting for the fields. 

A sala at Sua-rieng must open earlier than it ever 
opened before to give us an opportunity to wash, 
change, and eat at four o’clock. All these are acti- 
 vities that can be delayed no longer if we are to 
uphold British prestige in Saigon. 

But in the end we are broken reeds for British 
prestige. Parisienne exiles, exquisitely draped, 
painted and manicured, may mock at us for all we 
care. Pride drains low after forty-eight hours with 
- only four hours’ sleep to six hundred miles of rough 
travel. It is nothing to us that the Bureau de Tour- 
_ isme is in ecstasies over the pioneering feat we have 
_ performed in the car it hired to us. We droop over 
the passport formalities, we pillow our foreheads 
on our omelette at breakfast in the hotel, we are 
so light-headed that we buy a fur coat from a 
passing pedlar who doubtless cheats us, we sleep 
frankly in the shipping office with our heads between 
the typewriters on the counter, in the taxi that takes 
us to the ship we sag about like all the rest of the 
unconscious merchandise addressed to Tonkin. 
Having at last boarded the dirty little ship, we sleep 


306 THE LITTLE WORLD 


and sleep and sleep. And so we lose the end of a 
_journey;\we\lose the transition from one life to an- 
other, from the known to the unknown, from a life 
of seven-headed snakes and ghosts and gods under 
a red sinking moon to a life in which the cook wants 
seventy cents to buy a chicken for supper. 


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